Bruce reviews the Super Bowl Commercials, 2024

It’s that time of year again, so it’s Bruce’s review of the Super Bowl 2024 commercials.

So. Many. Celebrities. I guess if you're spending $7 million for 30 seconds, paying a celeb is a drop in the ocean.

Let’s start with the T-Mobile commercial with Jason Momoa featuring Jennifer Beals in a very strange commercial using Flashdance's ‘What a Feeling’. If Jason can sing like that for real, then it’s nice to hear. There’s also the same music being used in the commercial for Nerds, which is a terrible commercial, so it just shows you can use the same piece of music in commercials, one of which can be good and one of which can be appalling.

Okay, next up, Reese’s cups. This is a good news/bad news commercial, which is nicely done, and it’s fun. It’s not great, but it’s okay.

Then onto Dove, which is moving so far away from soap. It’s all about body confidence in 14-year-old girls, which is, I think, an interesting place to put it in the middle of the Super Bowl, but let’s see how that goes down.

And onto Michelob, which features Lionel Messi, for some bizarre reason, messing about on a beach; I have no idea why. Also, Ted Lasso, again for no apparent reason. He’s lost the trademark moustache in this one, which is a bit of a shame, but he is still recognisable, especially by the voice for me.

Best use of a mullet goes to Kawasaki. Their Ridge commercial is a fun idea.

Next up, a really good one. This is the BMW commercial about how they’re fed up with people copying what they do, and they’ve used Christopher Walken here in a good use of a celebrity, with everybody that he comes into contact with doing an impression of Christopher Walken. The idea is that BMW is the real deal. It's an original idea, and it's a nice idea.

Another nice idea is State Farm. They have a strapline which is ‘Like a good neighbour’. They’ve used Arnie, and the great thing about Schwarzenegger is he doesn’t do ‘r’s at the end of words, so they’ve got him repeating ‘neighbaa’ when he should be saying neighbour, and he must have said neighbour two dozen times and State Farm, too. It’s a really good commercial for reminding you all about the State Farm strapline.

Miller Lite is a terrible commercial. It features a celeb, but not the name of the brand. Miller. it's Miller Lite.

Then, onto the Doritos Dinamita, which uses two women, one called Dina and one called Mita, and it’s all right. It’s a bit of fun, and it gets the name across, but it's not a particularly interesting commercial.

Next up, a couple of crap ones. One for Starry which is a new name for a lemon and lime drink. It’s absolute rubbish, and e-trade, which is also complete rubbish. I’m not even going to bother spending time talking about them.

Then booking.com. It uses Tina Fey, but it doesn’t actually need her - or Glenn Close. The idea is 'Be who you want to be' when you book through booking.com, and it’s a great idea, but the use of celebrities is unnecessary.

Okay, then on to StoK, the cold brew coffee. This is using Tony Hopkins as Wrexham FC’s mascot called Rex. It's actually really clever, and I like this one - it's a good use of Tony Hopkins as well.

Another one that doesn’t need a superstar but gets one anyway is Pringles. It features Chris Pratt with a moustache that looks a bit like the Pringles moustache, but it doesn’t actually need superstar Chris Pratt to be that person. It could be using all sorts of different people wearing the Pringles moustache, but I guess it’s Super Bowl, so it has to have a celeb in it.

Not all commercials have to have celebs in them. There’s a really nice one for Google Pixel 8 featuring their guided frame AI, and it uses somebody who is sight impaired but still wants to take pictures, I guess, for other people to look at.

I love Hellmann’s mayonnaise commercial featuring a cat; the idea is that the celebrity doesn’t know what to do with a whole bunch of leftovers in the fridge and asks her cat and the cat says meow, which sounds like mayo. The cat becomes a superstar, which is a fun idea. It doesn’t need the celebrities in it.

Uber Eats is quite a nice one. It’s playing on the idea of ‘for gets’ and forgets and remembers, and the idea is that if you need to remember something, you need to forget something. It’s done quite nicely, and it uses celebrities in a good way.

Lindor is a terrible commercial playing on the idea that life is a ball, which I didn’t really get. Mountain Dew is also a terrible commercial. I’m not even going to go into that now.

Pluto TV, however, is a cracking idea. They grow couch potatoes. It’s an absolutely brilliant idea, really clever.

Clydesdales are back in the Budweiser commercial, and they’re delivering beer in a snowstorm, which a truck can’t do. And that’s just lovely.

Drumstick I, which is a sort of Cornetto, is just weird and wrong.

Another one that’s weird and wrong is the M&M commercial, which is all about the comfort ring, which I don’t get – maybe it’s about somebody who’s got piles.

Oreo has a fun idea, which is that you can make binary decisions by twisting an Oreo and seeing which side the cream is on.

Etsy is also quite a good, fun commercial using America getting the gift of the Statue of Liberty from France. It’s trying to work out what to give France back as a responding present - nice idea.

Body Armour, again it’s a bit like the Christopher Walken commercial for the BMW, but I was surprised by the words ‘real sweeteners’, and apparently, they do use real sweeteners, which I will call sugar.

Last, and by far the best by all accounts, is for VW. It’s all about the history of VW in the US, and it features a really nice historical progression style of commercial. It’s also over one of my favourite songs (I am, I said). And it finishes with a great strapline - 'We shape its metal. You shape its soul'. It must have cost a fortune - and doesn't feature a single celebrity.

And here it is. My winner for this year.

https://youtu.be/BjLzH8qj0gQ?si=LqNotUs_rxv9yMaq

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