By Cyote Williams | Times Vedette
I’m one of the people who enjoys most every aspect of the Super Bowl. I look forward to the game each year, regardless of the teams that are playing. I also enjoy the halftime show, regardless of the performer(s). Bad Bunny put on an incredible show this year. I even enjoy the commercials. This year’s game may have been a dud, but, somehow, the commercials were even worse.
Companies pay out the wazoo for an ad spot of just a few fleeting seconds during the Super Bowl. This year, according to USA Today, a 30-second spot cost $8 million on average. The average viewership for Super Bowl LX was 124.9 million viewers across all platforms, which is said to be the second-highest in the game’s history. If companies are going to spend that much money on their spot, then they might as well put together a good commercial.
This year, it seemed like every time the game took a commercial break, I was bombarded with gambling, AI and cryptocurrency advertisements. Some of them were downright awful. One commercial had plenty of living rooms singing the Backstreet Boys “Everybody (Backstreet’s’ Back)” until it revealed it was a Coinbase ad, which drew plenty of boos and groans in the house I was in.
Svedka, a vodka brand, produced one of the most disturbing commercials I’ve seen with the AI generated robots dancing around. Who wants to see that? The Coinbase commercial has 126,000 views on its YouTube channel and just 804 likes. The Svedka commercial has 229,000 views and a mere 312 likes, Both of these companies better be thanking their lucky stars that YouTube started hiding dislike numbers a few years ago.
You thought those were bad? How about Ring, the doorbell camera company and its Be A Hero In Your Neighborhoodcommercial. Ring, under the guise of using AI to help find your dog, just announced to the world it has facial recognition capabilities it can access at any time. Call me crazy, but I don’t like the idea of a company having the ability to use facial recognition to track down anyone by using its cameras whenever it pleases. The backlash was so heavy that just yesterday Ring announced it would be cancelling its partnership with the police tech provider Flock Safety. Meanwhile, the commercial had 4.2 million views and 1,600 likes.
What happened to the commercials of old? Mean Joe Green, “Hey kid, catch.” Simple, yet heartwarming. Or the incredibly goofy ones, like Budweiser’s “Whassup,” commercial. Not to mention all of the classic Clydesdale commercials Budweiser has made over the years. The E*TRADE talking baby commercial was a phenomenon that had staying power even after it aired, spurring plenty of spinoffs. My personal favorite came directly from the NFL in 2017 when the league paid homage to some of the game’s greats in this fun, action-filled commercial.
So, to the NFL and the companies that advertise during its greatest game, please try to do better next year.
Have a favorite Super Bowl commercial I missed? Reach out with comments, complaints, story ideas and more to cyote@dmcityview.com.