Super Bowl Ads 2022

As an agency, we pride ourselves on keeping an ear to the ground and prepping ourselves to guide our clients on everything from social strategy to strategic partnerships – be it celebrity endorsements or influencer marketing.

Each year during the Super Bowl, we keep a careful eye on how campaigns take shape to reveal trends in the advertising space. While these trends don’t always cross over into our immediate PR strategy, we do like to look for ways to help our clients add to a story or theme that is emerging in their ecosystem.

Check out some of our favorite ads from Sunday, along with our key takeaways below. Don’t see your favorite ad listed? Let us know what stood out to you in the comments!??

Celebrity Cameos:

Celebrity cameos are always a huge part of the Super Bowl, but we were blown away by how Amazon was able to use Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost to poke a little fun at common misconceptions about their Alexa product, while also giving people a glimpse into the lives of a seemingly private celebrity couple.?

Don’t just take our word for it, check out what Hype Beast had to say about Sunday’s most rewatched ad here.

DE&I:

A huge part of the cultural conversation in both 2020 and 2021, diversity and inclusion in ads was something we were certainly looking for during our commercial watching on Sunday.

Google knocked it out of the park with their ad for the Google Pixel. A good rule of thumb when looking at commercials in this space is a quote we heard from an AdAge Panel last week, “If you are talking to everyone, you are talking to nobody.”

Google’s incredible ad took this to heart and brought it to life in such a beautiful way. By playing into a shared experience in photography, there was no question about whom this ad was intended to speak to. The icing on the cake, to us, was the inclusion of Lizzo’s new song, “If You Love Me” which made its world debut in the ad. Check out more on this ad here.?

Storytelling:

A conversation we always have when developing social content is to lean into storytelling. One of the brands that continuously does an incredible job of this is Budweiser. This year, the King of Beers told an inspirational story of a dog encouraging a young horse back to health, without saying a single word. The 60-second ad, directed by Oscar Award Winner Chloé Zhao (Nomadland), used incredible cinematography, and animals, to tell a compelling story that tugged at the heartstrings of viewers.

New Tech & Trends:

Super Bowl 56 will go down as one of the most innovative, in terms of advertising. Crypto exchanges, metaverse mentions, and NFT sweepstakes were consistent players in this year’s Super Bowl advertising space, further engraining that these platforms are the future.

Two companies stood out to us in the space and did it in totally different ways. The standout for us was Coinbase, whose overly simple bouncing QR code spurred over 20 million hits to their website during their 60-second ad, according to Chief Marketing Officer, Kate Rouch. Unfortunately for Coinbase, their site could not withstand the onslaught of traffic, but you just can’t argue with that kind of conversion from a television ad.

On the flip side of a bouncing QR code was FTX, who enlisted Larry David to play – well, himself – in an ad poking fun at the lack of understanding around crypto. The ad, which ran around 7:30 p.m. EST on Sunday, played into a giveaway component that will see FTX give away over $300,000 in Bitcoin to a fan who retweeted the company’s tease of the commercial during the game.??

Brands Activating in Real-Time:

Being in the moment is so hard to do. It requires a nimble approach to social media, and Sunday saw several big-time small-screen wins. One that caught our eye was Planters, who may have sent the perfect tweet with this in-game offering.

Brands who have the latitude to activate in real-time, with a digital media team savvy enough to flip creative quickly, almost always score big in moments like this. By capitalizing on a fellow Super Bowl ad, Planters was able to position themselves in a global conversation around a real-time trend.???

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