Super Bowl advertising walks away from the pandemic with humor and hope

A year ago, many Super Bowl advertisers timidly entered the U.S. soccer league trying to respectfully acknowledge a difficult year with the Covid-19 pandemic.

This Sunday (13), the brands will return to the grand final using the proven tactic of causing great laughter or cheering the public with messages of strength and victory.

While Covid-19 remains a concern, new cases are decreasing across the country, some areas are already canceling orders to wear masks, and health experts are optimistic that the virus is getting more manageable.

The game itself, in front of 70,000 people at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles, will be more like the pre-pandemic season than last year, when the crowd in Tampa, Fla., was limited to a third of capacity. . Many commercials will reflect this.

“We’re hopeful to get back to normal a little bit. There are fans at the games and there’s enthusiasm,” two-time Super Bowl champion Eli Manning told Reuters.

Manning and his two-time Super Bowl champion brother Peyton will appear in an ad that features a ride on a party bus to promote Frito-Lay products including Doritos and Mountain Dew.

The Super Bowl offers brands the opportunity to appear in front of the largest television audience of the year in the US, nearly 100 million viewers. NBC, a unit of Comcast Corp., charged up to $7 million for 30-second commercials.

Advertisers are not expected to mention the pandemic explicitly, but some will praise the ability to overcome difficulties. Budweiser beer, for example, will tell the story of one of its trademarks, a Clydesdale horse, recovering from an injury.

The brewery, owned by Anheuser-Busch Inbev, stayed out of the Super Bowl last year, but made a donation in support of the Covid vaccination campaign. The company decided to go back with a more serious tone, said Budweiser vice president of marketing Daniel Blake, rather than something like its comical talking frogs of the past.

“It was vital to return to the stage with a message of hope and resilience for America,” Blake said.

The game will feature a mix of returning advertisers and brands making their first Super Bowl appearance.

Brands back include GM and Nissan car factories, Kellogg’s Pringles potatoes and travel site Expedia.

Amazon will offer the first trailer for its highly anticipated streaming TV series “Lord of the Rings”, which will premiere on Prime Video in September.

Newcomers will include cryptocurrency exchanges FTX Trading and Crypto.com.

“Many brands are taking advantage of the times we live in today and the heightened curiosity around crypto and the metaverse,” said Adweek editor Shannon Miller.

Meta, the company formerly called Facebook, will offer its Quest 2 virtual reality (headset) audio and video equipment. The commercial features a singing animated dog who has lost popularity but finds an exciting new life in the metaverse.

In other locations, there will be many celebrities. Arnold Schwarzenegger will play Zeus to promote an electric BMW, while Gwyneth Paltrow will promote Uber Eats. Zendaya will appear on behalf of Squarespace as someone turning to e-commerce to save their struggling business.

“We’re not going to see as much material on Covid as we used to. People are tired of thinking about it,” said Ronald Goodstein, an associate professor of marketing at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Management.

He said brands resuming familiar themes or mascots like Budweiser’s Clydesdales will appeal to audiences this year.

“I think people are looking for a little bit of tradition. People like comfort with the times we live in today, and there’s a certain comfort in nostalgia,” he added.

Amy Tennery and Aleksandra Michalska collaborated in New York.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves