By Adam Wakefield

Amidst the London-like weather Johannesburg was experiencing on Monday, 20 February, the luminous lights of FCB’s Sandton office greeted both invitees and staff as they descended to the ground floor to take in the commercials broadcast over the course of Super Bowl 2017.

Joint chief creative officers, Johnathan Deeb and Ahmed Tilly, led the presentation. Deeb told the packed room that among the interesting stats the Super Bowl offers, 24% of viewers say the commercials are the most important part of the Super Bowl.

“In the last few years, we have seen stats even higher than this,” he said.

The Super Bowl had such a history of advertising that many would rather miss the game than the commercials. “Viewers regard the adverts as entertainment, which is the area we want to be playing in,” Deeb said, also pointing out that the number of people who say a Super Bowl commercial influenced a purchasing decision has doubled.

Deeb, however, was underwhelmed by this year’s offering, calling the overall quality “somewhat disappointing”.

“Historically, they are some of our favourite ads, some of our top awarded ads in any given year, and this year wasn’t quite as strong a showing,” he said.

“There are some very strong pieces in the mix but, overall, the standard wasn’t pitched to what we are used to.”

Among the themes this year’s ream of advertising propagated were hot button topics, more celebrities, and quirkiness.

Hot button issues

The first commercial shown was an Audi effort, which focused on the gender equality gap, a hot button issue around the world.

The most interesting aspect for Tilly was how Audi approached it, showing a young woman winning a go-cart race.

“It is interesting how they tied that into Audi,” Tilly said. “After that ad had flighted, there was criticism against Audi for their own gender gap policies. If you are going to make a purposeful statement like that, you’ve got to have your house in order.”

On immigration, very much a hot issue in Trump’s America, both 84 Lumber and Budweiser made a stand, but in different ways.

Deeb believed that a brand should stand on the side of what’s right, wherever a brand’s view may rest on an issue, but does believe the link between 84 Lumber and immigration was tenuous at best.

“It is almost appropriating a cause for the sake of it,” he said.

On the other hand, Tilly thought of Budweiser’s commercial as one of his favourite’s from this year’s Super Bowl selection.

“It was just executed very differently. It was more meaningful and had a better connection to the brand. If you allow it, then you accept it. I thought this was very tastefully done,” Tilly said.

The same applied to Airbnb. Even though their Super Bowl commercial was different from what they have produced in the past, Tilly felt they were putting their money where their mouth is, and showing what they sought to be as a brand, following recent controversies.

Celebrities for the sake of celebrities

Among the commercials shown featuring celebrities, Deeb noted that many a creative often dreams of having a celebrity to use in a commercial, but more often than not, brands squander the opportunity presented.

This applied to T-Mobile’s commercial featuring Justin Bieber – though it did generate much social media chatter – and arguably compared to Christopher Walken and Justin Timberlake’s appearance in drink brand Bai’s commercial.

However, Melissa McCartney’s appearance in Kia’s Niro commercial was a better fit, though perhaps did not strike the right tone with some of their target audience.

Quirky is as quirky does

While T-Mobile arguably bombed with their Justin Bieber commercial, it seems their commercial featuring Kristen Schall and the pain/love of poor service was closer to the mark. Avocados from Mexico contained their track record of looney commercials, while Febreze’s Halftime #BathroomBreak was, well, unique.

Even Skittles managed to do something a bit different, using the rock-against-the-window trope as the basis for a commercial that was distinctive, but stuck in the memory.

Among the other themes, Deeb noted that one of the most popular commercials was a trailer for the upcoming film Logan. Apart from getting the audience to want to go see the film, it was a reminder that brands are not just competing against brands, and agencies are not just competing with other agencies, when it comes to creative work.

They are, in fact, competing against all forms of entertainment, which as Deeb noted in the beginning, was where they want to play. Advertising does not have the same star power and budgets to draw on compared to a feature length film and trailer, so being creative and smart is more important than ever.

“We are just one storyteller in the mix of a million pieces of content competing for eyeballs. We are not playing in a niche space. We are competing with reality. We are competing with entertainment. It means being on trend, it means being entertaining, it means being brave,” Deeb said.

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