super bowl ads advertising analysis

Introduction
For this project, I took a look at a couple of commercials from the 2019 Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is the single biggest ad spend in America each year, and most companies create special ads just for the event, many of which will not be shown again. Thus, the approach to messaging and creative is a little bit different, but given the amount of money in play, it is well worth analyzing these ads for perceived effectiveness.
Ad #1
The first ad is for M&Ms, where they introduce a new product, a bar with M&Ms embedded inside. The ad features a woman driving in a minivan, and adult voices (the M&Ms) coming from the back. The voices are saying things kids might say if they were fighting or becoming unruly. The “mother” eventually stops the vehicle, turns around and threatens to come back there, and then there’s a shot revealing that it was M&Ms doing the arguing, because they are stuck together in one bar. Then a voiceover announces the new product.
The woman is clearly intended to be a “mother” based on her age, the minivan and her behavior, including turning around to yell at the unruly “kids”. Most of the sounds are the M&Ms arguing. They are the typical voices from other M&M ads, so they don’t actually sound like children. This leads the viewer to realize immediately that whatever is in the back is not children, but something else. The shot at the end with the reveal is therefore informative, somewhat anticlimactic, but at the same time you never know until that shot what exactly the voices are.
A premise in an advertisement is a major claim around which the ad is structured (White, 2016). The hidden premise here is that snack food companies that make funny ads also make fun snacks. This premise is evident is the lack of any sort of an argument in the ad; it appears to be funny for the sake of being funny. Further, the product reveal at the end is a fairly goofy product – maybe it’s fun but it doesn’t appear to have any real value proposition beyond that. The minor premises in this ad are that the ad is funny because it conveys a relatable situation, and that M&Ms are fine because the anthropomorphic M&Ms are lively and goofy, and the product itself is a whacky take on an M&M snack.
This particular ad doesn’t seem to make any serious claims. A claim would be some sort of value proposition that the product has. There might be an implied claim that the new product is fun, or a good snack, but the ad does not expend any real energy trying to convey that claim. It mostly exists just to be funny, and to alert the consumer to the existence of a product extension. For an ad to be effective, it should ideally make a claim that matters to the target audience. The only message that is being sent to the target audience here is that the company is trying to relate to them. If that is effective, there’s still not much of a sales pitch, and the company is relying on the humor of the ad to sell the product, without making further claims.
All told, I do not find this ad to be particularly effective. There are a lot of snack and fast food companies marketing their products using humor to entertain, and then mention the product at the end. The hope, theoretically, is that the product mention will keep it top of mind when shopping. What I see with this ad is that there’s a new product, but it’s not really being made to stick in the mind of the consumer. It is not actually shown, just an animated version. Without a strong claim that there is something unique and interesting to the ad, the best that the company can hope for is that it entertained the audience long enough to introduce the product.
If that is the goal, I’m not sure it was that effective either. As Super Bowl ads go, there’s really nothing special here. The story is fairly thin, and not that interesting. The setting is visually bland and uninteresting. While my take might be related to me not being in the target market, I would expect something more grabbing if the company is going to take 25 seconds to tell me why I’m watching. I don’t think the grab is strong enough to attract and maintain attention long enough to make the pitch, and then the pitch itself is weak. This seems like an ineffective ad for me.
Ad #2
The second is an ad for Audi. It starts with a man walking in a field of grain, insect chirping, towards an old house. A pan back reveals that the house has a big tree beside it, and overlooks some rolling hills in the background, so it is a spectacular setting. There is some quiet background music that starts to rise a bit. There’s an old man sitting on the front step, and the younger man continues to approach the house, and says “Grandpa?” The old man says “Welcome home,” and they embrace. They go inside a garage and the old man says “C’mon, I’ve got something for ya.” Inside is an Audi, and the young man gets inside. The car is unplugged, and the young man revels in the car. There are various shots of different parts of the car, all looking beautiful, shiny and luxurious. The music continues to rise throughout this part of the ad. Where the garage door should be is now a very bright light, and the man smiles. Then, suddenly, he jerks. The setting changes, and he is in a drab office, being given the Heimlich manouver by a co-worker. He spits out a cashew, and his co-workers are thankful that he’s alive. He, on the other hand, appears not.
The major premise of this ad is that Audi is heavenly, and aspirational. There are a series of underlying minor premises to this. The man is dying, and the light is heaven. His dying dream includes meeting his grandfather, in a beautiful setting, and driving this car. The man is disappointed to be interrupted by reality. There is also a premise around the dream state being induced by the choking on the cashew. That owning such a car is a dream is another premise, though that one plays on the aspirational nature of the vehicle, rather than making a claim that the man cannot actually afford this car.
The major claim of this ad is that the Audi is a dream or heavenly vehicle, one of the things that someone might want most, a dying wish fulfilled. Those implications are never explicitly stated, but the car is positioned as just as important, if not more so, as meeting his grandfather. It’s also the vehicle in which it is implied that he will drive into the light. The dreary office setting is part of another claim, that the vehicle is aspirational in nature, a luxury to work towards and dream of, a goal or marker of success in life. Audi is generally positioned this way, and the imagery of the people working in a drab environment contrasts with the pleasure that the car gives. This claim is supported by the visual image of the man. While in the dream, standing tall, well-dressed and confident, but in the office sloppy, slouching and visibly unhappy.
This is an example of an effective ad. First, it speaks to Audi’s positioning in the marketplace. The company does a good job of positioning its vehicle as a marker of success in life, and the lead aspires to own that car. Furthermore, this ad has fairly strong premises, and underlying claims.
The premise speaks to the brand’s positioning, and is generally supported by the product and pricing. The car is visually stunning in the ad, and is presented in a unique way (i.e. not driving on a beautiful highway). The more humorous aspect of the premise of course is a bit sillier, the part about the cashew, but the humor seeks to sell the other messages of the ad, and catch attention, playing on the hook. The juxtaposition of the dream state and the real life state is also quite strong, and using a work scene literally shows what the person has to go through to get to the point where they own that car – again supporting the ad’s major premise.
The claims relating to the beauty and amazing nature of the car are supported with strong visuals. There is alignment between the look and feel of the different scenes, and what those scenes are trying to convey. Audi has not reinvented the wheel here, but it does an effective job of making its case as an aspirational vehicle, and one that someone in that position should be thinking about already, even if they cannot yet afford one. I feel that the ad understands the target market, but also makes an effective argument in its favor, and plants the idea that the person needs to start thinking about an Audi.
Conclusions
For an ad to be effective, it should have a premise, and claims, but also a structure that makes those clear and conveys them in an entertaining manner. This is especially true during the Super Bowl. There are a lot of distractions, but a lot of people also watch specifically for the ads. When an ad supports the brand positioning, and conveys the message effectively, something that the Audi ad does, it should have a position impact on brand associations and purchase intention. That Audi specifically wants the audience to think a certain way about its vehicles regardless of whether or not they can afford one is another interesting aspect of the ad, one that I feel was quite effective.
The M&M ad is less effective. It has a fairly weak premise, and does not make many claims. What messaging it does contain is a loose association between a fun ad and a fun product, but that’s neither original nor actually speaking too much to the product’s value props. Further, for a new product introduction ad, it doesn’t really do anything to sell the new product, and takes way too long to get to the point. The product introduction is the punchline of the ad, but there’s not much to grab the viewer’s attention to get to that point. For those reasons, I found the M&M ad to be ineffective. To make this more effective, the ad would want to spend a little less time on the silliness in the mid-section of the ad and get straight to explaining why the viewer needs to care about this new product. A little bit of that messaging would go a long way to improving the effectiveness of this ad.
References
TrendCave (2019) Top 10 Best Super Bowl Commercials (2019, Funniest Ads Super Bowl LIII). YouTube. Retrieved March 4, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9weiTXQjns
White, T. (2016) Want a good ad? Conceal the premise. Travis White. Retrieved March 4, 2019 from https://traviswhitecommunications.com/2016/03/26/want-a-good-ad-conceal-the-premise/