History will remember last night's Eagles triumph in the Super Bowl as one of the more lopsided wins in the history of the big game. But, as usual, just as many people are talking about the commercials as the final score.
Tim Riester, CEO of Riester Advertising, joined The Show to talk about how running a Super Bowl ad is a high-stakes gamble.
Full conversation
TIM RIESTER: It’s so important because all of the commercials around you are trying to be the most unique and ingenious messaging. They’ll bring in sought-after talent like celebrities. And so when you create one of these commercials, you need to bring a much greater amount of discipline. Because the advertisement is not just appearing in front of so many people with one opportunity to succeed, but it’s competing against so many other highly attractive messages.
SAM DINGMAN: Well, it strikes me that you’re going for a message that will resonate, in the moment, when it airs. But now there’s this whole Super Bowl ad industrial complex that’s sprung up around it. So, there's going to be follow-up conversations like the one we’re having. You drop them on YouTube a little bit ahead of time to get the conversation started. It just seems like there’s so many factors that you're trying to take into account.
RIESTER: It’s several weeks of fanfare leading up to this opportunity. And it’s interesting because often the teasers that you see from brands aren't anywhere near what the actual commercial will be on game day.
DINGMAN: Right, there’s like a trailer for the commercial.
RIESTER: Exactly. It’s like a movie trailer, just for a 30- or 60-second commercial.
DINGMAN: So thinking back, you know, prior to talking about the commercials from this year, any commercials from the last several years that really stick in your mind as particularly successful in taking all these factors we’re talking about into account?
RIESTER: I think the first big one that broke through was Apple Computers when they first launched their brand. The commercial was called “1984,” and it was a play on George Orwell’s book. And it was just this amazing image of all of these engineers sitting in a theater, and this lady comes in swinging a hammer, one of these swinging tools that you see like in the Olympics. And she throws it up and shatters the screen and really conveys that something totally new in that high-tech industry was coming and and and that changed the way people looked at the Super Bowl for advertising.
DINGMAN: If I’m not mistaken, did Ridley Scott direct that commercial?
RIESTER: Yes, excellent memory.
DINGMAN: Yeah, I mean that to me is such an interesting moment in terms of kind of announcing this form, as something worthy of creative discussion and critical debate. And now it’s reached the point where that level of prestige has moved in front of the camera, right? And now it’s like a competition.
I feel like one of the leitmotifs in the Super Bowl every year is like, “How many ads will Matt Damon be in, and how many ads will Matt Damon be talked about in?” So am I right that that “1984” ad also kind of augured the arrival of mainstream celebrities taking this seriously as a medium?
RIESTER: It did and, and so much so that as a viewer, I’d like to see more discretion, right? So, this last night, how many ads did we see with Matthew McConaughey? Or Tom Brady? I mean, the poor guy, he was in more ads, I think, than he had color commentary for the game.
DINGMAN: Exactly, exactly. OK, so let’s talk about last night. What for you were the highlights? What were the most successful ads?
RIESTER: There were lots of categories we could explore. I think the newest category was AI, and there were more commercials promoting AI than ever in the history of the Super Bowl. Only one of them was appealing to me, and that was Google Gemini. And it was a beautiful ad about how Google Gemini, on the Google phone, helped coach a person for a job interview. And it went through their life and how their experience as a father helped prepare them for all kinds of things in business.
That was beautifully done. Now, to answer the rest of your questions, the other categories that really caught my eye: cause-related issues. There were more ads for cause-related issues this year, which I always love when people use the opportunity of the Super Bowl to to make some positive change in our society.
Novartis with their breast cancer commercial. I thought it was extremely attention grabbing, and then it brought us to the point where, “hey, we all are noticing breasts every day, but we ought to be thinking about the real issue that can help protect women, and that’s early detection.”
DINGMAN: That was a pretty interesting one I thought, additionally because it also felt like obviously there’s a fixation with women’s bodies in American culture, but the Super Bowl is that energy on steroids, generally speaking. So, doing that in the midst of the Super Bowl felt particularly loaded.
RIESTER: I love that. I had goosebumps all over my arms when I saw that commercial and was so proud of them for using that opportunity. Another trick in the Super Bowl, in that 30 second opportunity is, how do you connect among all viewers?
DINGMAN: Well, that makes me think about the Jeep ad, and I wonder what you felt about that one.
RIESTER: It definitely, the Jeep ad deserves an honorable mention. Harrison Ford is always amazing, right? He can deliver any script well. Their message was all about freedom. And I liked how they wove it into how this vehicle can help provide you freedom. And that’s something that resonates to the older consumer, because we can look back on that, but it’s also really good advice to the younger consumers watching the Super Bowl.
DINGMAN: So just a couple more minutes here, Tim, we’ve talked about what these ads are really aspiring to. We’ve talked about the ones that pulled it off particularly successfully. What in your mind were some of the less successful attempts last night?
RIESTER: I was really disappointed in the Dunkin’ commercials.
DINGMAN: Yes, OK, The DunKings
RIESTER: The DunKings. First of all, I find it curious that they just focus on coffee when it was America’s iconic donut brand, right? They were trying to take on Starbucks in this commercial, but it was loaded with so many different celebrities. It was packed with way too many jokes, and I found that it was extremely difficult to follow, and I think it flopped.
DINGMAN: Well, especially since I feel like their, kind of, central joke was the idea that Jeremy Strong takes acting very seriously, which is largely well known because of a New Yorker profile from a couple of years ago, which is directly targeted at me as an audience, but I don’t know how many people in the broader culture, have recently reread that Michael Shulman profile from 2022, or whatever it was. So, it’s sort of an odd joke to sit really heavily in.
RIESTER: Insider jokes usually don’t play well, and sometimes a memorable commercial can be a real flop because they just don’t have the judgment and discretion to do what would be appropriate for the audience. An example of that is a first-time advertiser in the Super Bowl this year, Coffee-Mate.
DINGMAN: Oh dear.
RIESTER: And clearly they were trying to reposition the brand for a much younger audience. But the dancing tongue was so just disturbing and gross. Everyone at the party I attended when they were watching this, they were just like, “oh my gosh, that’s hideous.” And I think especially with a food product, you don't want to do something that’s gross even if it’s memorable.
DINGMAN: I think so. I think so. I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the postmortem meeting about that ad today.
