It’s no secret many of us watch the Super Bowl just for the commercials.
As the biggest ad event of the year, marketers bring their A game to the NFL championship, in a seeming attempt to outdo each other year after year, while spending a reported $5 million (U.S.) per 30-second spot.
It’s also the first time the American ads will air on Canadian TV during the game after a 2015 regulatory ruling.
This year’s offerings are already leaking out — Budweiser has already grabbed headlines with its ad, diving into the debate over immigration in America. Here’s a look at five others:
“I love you, halftime bathroom break”
Who knew Febreze was so funny?
Capitalizing on “The Super Bowl Flush” — or the idea that millions of viewers are relieving themselves at the same time during the game — the odour-fighting agent reminds Americans to prepare their bathrooms because “sometimes, you stink.”
Toilet montage aside, it’s truly a clever celebration of pushing the public water utility system to its limits.
Justin Bieber, celebration expert
Our favourite Canadian bad boy cleans up real nice in a suit and spectacles for T-Mobile’s #UnlimitedMoves campaign, encouraging viewers to “post your moves now” to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I see a lot of drunk dancing in our future.
Stick to cars, Audi.
In a confused attempt to conflate the current political climate on gender equality with auto sales, this ad has mostly been panned by men and women alike, failing to inspire America’s feminist ranks to #DriveProgress.
It shows a young girl competing with boys in a soapbox derby and her father in a voiceover wondering, “That, despite her education her drive, her skills and her intelligence, she will automatically be valued at less than every man she meets?”
What do you think? What should you tell your daughter?
Romance the Rainbow
This Skittles commercial is just so bad, it’s good.
Or actually, maybe it’s just bad.
A would-be Romeo throws Skittles into the open window of his love interest Katie, whose entire family, a burglar, a cop and — most surprisingly — a random CGI beaver are waiting, mouths open, to catch them. That’s it. That’s the commercial. Taste the waste of money, indeed.
Eco warrior McCarthy
Poor Melissa McCarthy just wants to do good for the world and save the whales, the trees, the ice caps, the rhinos . . . But as this Kia Niro commercial shows, environmentalism is like, really hard and will usually end with you plunging dramatically to your fate.
So I guess you may as well buy a smart car.
The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
