The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched TV programs of the year, so advertisers always spend big bucks to get their products in front of the millions of eyeballs watching the game. Brands invest so heavily in Super Bowl Sunday that their commercials are often big-budget productions.
This year’s biggest commercial gamble comes from Snickers. In hopes to sell the satisfying candy bar to eaters old and new, the brand is enlisting Star Wars actor Adam Driver to star in a live commercial.
It’s a big risk. The rest of the commercials that air on Sunday will have been painstakingly shot, edited, and focus-grouped before they hit the air. Snickers is likely hoping to get enough publicity off the novelty of the live commercial and inclusion of Driver to offset a potential crash and burn during the live ad.
The candy bar brand has been teasing their upcoming commercial with online promos and news stories. Here is one of the teasers from YouTube.
Skittles, always good for a sometimes-inappropriate laugh, has a great ad they’ll place on Sunday’s Super Bowl involving a young man’s attempt to get a girl’s attention by throwing Skittles at her window. The spot features family members, a robber, a cop, and a gopher (wait, a gopher?) catching the candies thrown at the girl’s window. It’s pretty funny.
After being on YouTube for a week, the ad has already been watched more than three million times. That bodes pretty well for the commercial’s reception on Sunday.
Proctor and Gamble is debuting the first-ever Super Bowl ad for Mr. Clean this year. The bald, buff champion of the shiny floor makes cleaning the house look much sexier than it ever is for me.
As someone who does most of the cleaning at our house, I have to say, my wife has never reacted like that to me mopping the floor. Maybe I need a tight white T-shirt and muscles where I have fat.
Finally, Heinz is going a different route for Super Bowl advertising this year. They’re not buying an ad. Instead they are making the Monday after the Super Bowl a vacation day for their employees. Dubbed “Smunday,” the company is hoping that by getting attention for their generous vacation day, they’ll get more exposure than paying as much as $5.5 million for a 30-second commercial spot.
If you miss any of Sunday’s Super Bowl ads, swing by The Federalist on Monday and I’ll recap the best of bunch along with highlights from the battle on the gridiron between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons. Oh, and don’t miss my food piece tomorrow, where I’ll tell you the perfect fried chicken to make for Sunday’s big game!