Super Bowl Ads: All the Highs and Lows

Hopefully you had a relaxed and enjoyable Super Bowl ad-viewing experience last night, but your friends at Adweek were deep in the marketing mines, chipping away at all the game's ad concepts in hopes of finding the occasional gem.

As Super Bowls go, it wasn't one of my favorites overall, but I enjoyed the range of creativity on display. There weren't many high highs, but also few truly low lows. Marketers seemed a bit unsure how to handle America in 2020, so they often erred on the side of just throwing as many celebrities or references as they could into one chaotic spot. Sometimes the result was a fun ride, but other times it was just a confusing and mediocre mashup.

Jeep was obviously the key exception. Chicago agency Highdive (which also made the Jason Momoa spot for Rocket Mortgage) revived Groundhog Day and even somehow coaxed Bill Murray into his first—and, he says, last—national ad. The result was perhaps my favorite movie-centric Super Bowl ad since Matthew Broderick revisited Ferris Bueller's Day Off for Honda in 2012.

Planters' resurrection of Mr. Peanut into #BabyNut was...a talker? While generally seen as a let-down considering all the hype around the mascot's supposed death, the campaign definitely resulted in more debate than just about anything beyond politics.

You can check out my picks for the Top 10 Super Bowl ads of the year here.

Hit me on Twitter at @Griner or at the email below to let me know how you're feeling about the ads now that they're under the scrutiny of the cold light of day. Also, unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume you were all in that Sabra ad.

David Griner
Creative and Innovation Editor, Adweek
[email protected]

Planters' "Baby Nut" was certainly one of the night's most debated spots

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Voting up Jeep and thumbs-down for the spot from Donald J. Trump for President

Some brands tried to touch on issues while remaining lighthearted