Morning, Brian.

Good morning. Welcome.

Happy post Super Bowl to you.

You as well. The big game. What'd you think?

I had a hard time caring about either one of those teams last night, to be honest.

Yeah, yeah, me too. The game wasn't very good until the end, but, always a fun time.

I went for the ads. I stayed for the ads. I took my breaks during the game. True story.

a lot of, I think a lot of people, uh, were in that bucket.

Well, this is our, this is our special post Super Bowl ad review special, so let's get going.

Yeah, let's do it. I was just fascinated by the, amount of money these brands are spending, uh, just even getting the game.

Yeah, the amount of money spending to get in the game and also just the sheer revenue that's generated around the game is astounding to me. Last year it was six hundred million dollars, In ad sales went to Fox this year, CBS likely to get that as well. And that doesn't include all the other stuff that goes around just the ad sales. There's so much more than that

Yeah, it's a juggernaut, to say the least.

to say the least. I saw a stat that, Super Bowl spending nationwide for food, drinks and decorations was 16. 5 billion last year.

my

amazing.

We'll wait for the first trillion dollar Super Bowl impact. It's coming soon.

Yeah, and there's gambling around it, uh, what, what gets spent locally on hospitality for the host city, ticket sales, let me just drop in the bucket. But last year that was 66 million went to the NFL just on ticket sales for the game. and that's probably the smallest piece of money around this whole thing.

I know. I know. The amount of money, and being in Vegas, just like, you know, with everything being, supersized, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And what do you think about the, uh, the amount of money spent on the halftime show?

Ooh, well, I don't know what it costs to produce. I haven't seen that figure. I was curious to see how much Apple pays to do it, uh, 50 million a year for five years just to host that thing. Which. I mean, how many, how many music subscriptions do you have to have to make that worthwhile?

You know, even the non football fans, they, they rush to the TV during that, that part. So, uh, Are they getting their money's worth? Probably. If you get that many eyeballs at one time, it's probably worth it, but it's a lot of money.

It is a lot of money. And you're right, people do come back. But if they didn't come back beforehand, they didn't see the big Apple branding coming in, they probably saw it coming out. But I think, did Usher really reinforce the Apple music brand? In his performance in any way? I didn't notice. Maybe he did.

There's probably some better, integration of that, that Apple could do, you know, and maybe they do, some things with like playlists or syncing some things up, but, you know, if you're gonna, but it's about 12 minutes long or something, that's a, that's about 24 commercials or, but,

Good point. Good point. So it's a bargain then, you're saying,

Yeah.

24 times the seven million dollars per spot this year. Yeah, they saved money. Half price, basically half price for the halftime show.

Nice. Well, John, I got a stat for you. Uh, so on the, on the, on the regular ad, the 30 second ad, obviously it is a lot been reported on, you know, 7 million for a 30 second spot. that's 233, 000. Dollars a second. So I'm going

for for non football fans who tune in and ask the question What what what societal problems could be solved for all this money? Don't think about two hundred thirty three thousand dollars per second okay, so as expensive as it was to, to run a spot, uh, this year at 7 million per 30 seconds, 30 seconds back in 1966 for Super Bowl one cost advertisers about 42, 500. So bargain.

Yeah, I saw that uh in today's money That's it's only 000

What a steal.

so John what was the first Super Bowl? To go over a million dollars a spot

Ooh. Uh, boy. I kind of think I remember when it happened, but I don't know when that was, 90, 1990.

95.

Ooh, okay. Took a while.

Yeah.

hey, I got, I got a quiz for you. Back to Super Bowl one.

Okay.

Think you can name, I'll make it attainable here. Two advertisers.

Oh my

Two advertisers who showed up in Super Bowl one. What do you got? Do you guess?

General Electric

Good guess? No.

Ford

Yes.

really

Yep.

interesting and I'm gonna throw one more out there. What about uh, Can we say Coke? Is there like a, a beverage brand there? What do you

is a beverage brand, uh, I don't think Coke, um, Budweiser. So anyway, this is, this is not super comprehensive because there's apparently one remaining copy of the broadcast of Super Bowl one in an individual possession NFL doesn't own it. but, know, academics have reported that Ford Chrysler RCA, RJ Reynolds tobacco. Remember that, McDonald's Budweiser in Goodyear. we're all in Super Bowl one. I don't know if the ones you guessed weren't, but those were definitively they are sourced as yes, they were in it. most of them were sexist as hell. I watched the Goodyear spot. It's amazing.

if there's a Joe DiMaggio coffee spot.

Exactly. so anyway, you, you, you were about to, tell me more about the, the, the inflation costs, I think.

Well, yeah, I mean, uh, one of the things that I'm interested in seeing is, when will be the first 10 million spot at Super Bowl? And, you know, if we're going off of this, trajectory, you know, in 95 it went over a million dollars, you know, 3 million in 2010. 5 million, uh, in 2021, I think by 2030, we're probably gonna 10 million spot. Super.

think you're right, especially since it continues to be the only, home, for, live TV viewership. They're the biggest draw for that these days. I looked at the year by year pricing, uh, which is why I kind of knew. Um, roughly when it went to a million, it was flat this year, but did you know that there are only, there've only been four years where the price went down?

Really?

Yeah. And when I say down, I mean like, you know, from 5. 6 million to 5. 5 million. So like 1 percent decrease, 2 percent decrease. Yeah. 1984, 1996, 2007, 2021. All those years, the, the. Price for 30 went down.

Interesting.

Yeah. Handful of years were flat, including this year, but, um, generally it goes up, up, up, up, up.

That's only, that's only part of the story though. I mean, not much more that goes behind an ad than just buying them buying the ad.

Yes, which I think people would be shocked to know how much it cost to produce some of these things.

Yeah. So, so let's talk about some of those, uh, some of those things that go into actually, you know, putting the ad together.

Yeah. I did some digging. It's hard to find. production costs, actual average production costs for a 30 second commercial nationally. but you can assume it's got to be pushing up on a million dollars, um, average. And that's not necessarily just a Super Bowl commercial. That's just, you know, average national TV commercial, probably pushing a million dollars by the time you pay for shooting, editing, talent, all that stuff. But Super Bowl is special, right? Because you've got all these celebrities showing up.

Yeah. You gotta make a, you gotta put a stamp on it.

And I think you were keeping track during the game of just how many celebrities were popping up. I think I knew probably, I don't know, half of them. I I didn't even recognize.

You know, there's, there's just celebrities that, you know, like immediately there's the celebrities that, kind of are like retro celebrities. Then there's these adjacent celebrities. Uh, and so it, there's a fascinating, melting pot of celebrity in these ads. And, uh, you know, part of it probably is like, you know, who can I get my hands on? So, So, but there's, those celebrities make some, some nice money on those commercials. That's for sure.

Uh, yeah. So last year, Ben Affleck got paid almost 10 million to do the Dunkin Donuts ad. Now that, that's a little skewed because that included him and, his production company actually was behind it. Creating the spot. So yeah, yeah. So he and he and Matt Damon have a production company together. And so that 10 million fee kind of covered some of that too. So it's a little blurry, but bigger stars generally are getting one to 3 million I read, which is kind of amazing.

Yeah. And the celebrities have a lot of fun with, with getting in these ads, which is great. but that's not such a bad, paycheck either.

No. And then there's the music, which again, it's kind of hard to know exactly how much that costs. But, back in, uh, back in 2019, for the Super Bowl, uh, basically you're looking at a hundred thousand dollars to license a lesser known song with kind of limited usage rates up to three quarters of a million, 750, 000 for what you would consider to be more of an iconic song with a longer usage term. So, you add that in, you add in the celebrity talent, you add the production and then agency fees.

Yeah. Yeah.

Generally speaking, unless you're running an in house shop, which still has costs associated, you've got agency fees that probably run you, God, at least half a million dollars by the time you, you spend all the time to, to produce a spot.

Yeah. I mean, the, um, the menu of all these fees and how you can kind of bundle some of them, like that, like you said, with Aflac and the

Mm hmm.

Or, you know, some of the agencies you're already paying a retainer for, but sometimes you need to bring in more power and more time. Uh, there is a trend of people doing these spots in house.

Yeah,

Without an agency. Um, sometimes that shows sometimes it doesn't, but that's a different approach. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, if you're spending 7 million for the ad itself, and you're, you're doing something that defines yourself. You also want to make sure that you're not just, you know, zeroing in too much on yourself, you know, kind of really lose subjectivity and, and objectivity to it. So, um, so, so there's a lot that definitely goes into it.

a huge amount that goes into it when you consider the fact that, you know, all those extra fees to create the spot on top of running the spot, you know, you're probably looking at 7 million times 2, right? Just do the 30, and don't forget a lot of those spots are 60s.

Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about the trend of people releasing their spots before the Super Bowl?

oh, I love it. I, I like seeing them ahead of time. Um,

it. I hate

Oh, do ya?

Yeah. I want to be surprised.

ha ha.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. If you're going to spend all that money and then it's going to leak, I mean, it would be like releasing an album before you're, you know, there's build up to the day you release it. And when you get everybody in front of the TV, and you get people surprised, but, you know, when I've seen it five days before, by the time I see it during the Super Bowl, like, I care less.

All right, Cranky Pants. What about the idea of a teaser? You know, where they do something that kind of like sets it up but doesn't actually reveal the spot. How about that? You're, you're good. Okay.

Yeah. Now, you know, there's a lot that goes into the atmosphere you're watching it into, you know, like, are you watching it,

True.

watching it in bigger settings, you know, where the spot actually comes in during the game. To me, I love the spots that are like right at the beginning of the game. And

Mm hmm.

near the end, if it's a close game where those really pay off, it's really, it's, you could really get, you know, if it's a blowout, you know, nobody's watched in the third or fourth quarter, but last night. You know, I feel like more people started tuning in and some of the later ones had some more, effectiveness.

I will say, you know, in terms of the whole releasing spots in advance, you know, maybe that's nerding out on them, um, because, I'm the guy who created a bingo game for, uh, the 2017 Super Bowl, where I had a party and everyone got a bingo card with clues about spots. And, you know, as they revealed themselves, you filled in your squares. I made a game of it. So, I had people pretty tuned in to the spots that, that year.

yeah. John, John, you're not, you're not like everybody else.

You know, that's fair, fair enough. Alright, well, hey, listen, you and I agreed to do some evaluating of, the spots this year. You want to get into that?

Let's go.

Let's do it. All right. What's first?

what, what do you think was the best spot? Was most entertaining, the funniest?

Most entertaining funniest. Um, I, I'm struggling to answer that one. I, the Dunkin's one with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon was pretty funny, but I had some execution issues with that one. I'm going to go with the BMW, talking like walking. and, and maybe this is where you're, don't watch too much of it in advance. I think on the second reviewing, I really, I found it fun and funny. I don't think it delivered on the electric car message at all. nor am I sure that BMW needs to convey the message that it's the real deal, but it was a blast watching people imitate Christopher Walken in front of Christopher Walken.

Yeah, I didn't like that one. I, I, I love the Christopher Walken voice. I just thought it didn't connect to BMW at all and it was just kind of gimmicky.

so what was your most entertaining, funniest?

love the Duncan one too. I was watching it again this morning and every time I watched it, I feel like the execution was, it got better every time I watched it. but my, my favorite one was the, uh, Michael Cera, CeraVe commercial. I thought that was hilarious. I mean, it was just hilarious. It was just funny. Um,

It was pretty funny.

you know, and if you, if you don't remember, it was, uh, the actor, Michael Sarah saying that the, the product Sarah V, a, uh, a moisturizer or moisturizing cream product was his idea and, uh, he was behind it. And I just thought that

That was pretty good.

he played it so well. And, uh, just like the, the way that he kind of made fun of himself in it. Like, I just thought that was hilarious.

What do you think was the most effective ad? In your mind, in terms of kind of, you know, establishing kind of a brand, brand perception or maybe moving some product. What'd you think?

I thought the most effective one was the, the Volkswagen ad, uh, that really hit home to me, uh, you know, that brand's had some trouble, with some scandals and they hadn't done a Super Bowl ad in 12 years.

Oh, really? 12 years. No kidding.

yeah, and, they, they had a, you know, Neil Diamond track on there, which was, which was kind of interesting, but the, it just, that to me is like a, a product that. They really resonated with people and I don't know, maybe it's just me, the, uh, we, when I was a kid, we used to have Volkswagen bugs. So, but I just thought it was very well done and, nostalgic. Now, are people going to go out and run out and buy a Volkswagen? I don't know, but they, I feel like they brought themselves a little bit back to prominence with that. What about, what about you?

for most effective. I think that, I sometimes I'm a sucker for good old fashioned product demo. I thought that Google pixel. Um, with the blind guy who was able to take pictures of himself, and then his wife, or a significant other, and then their baby. I thought that was really effective in terms of, you know, pulled the heart strings, uh, really humanized a piece of technology, and, it just was a really good product demo.

okay. Yeah, yeah. Good What about most gratuitous use of celebrity?

Okay, most gratuitous use. little bit of a toss up for me, but I'm going to go with T Mobile Magenta status, which was just a parade of celebrities and semi celebrities for no real purpose that I could discern.

Yeah, I hated that one too. Yeah, it was just dumb and like some of the celebrities I just like why do they like common like who who wants to see common

And what a waste of paying Bradley Cooper. What are you doing? That's nonsense. Oh, good point.

yeah, I mean they could have done something so much better if they have him and his mom, I just feel like, whatever. But my I'm going to go with Tom Brady. Um, you know, I thought he was pretty good in both ads, but it's getting a little ridiculous, you know, and I'm surprised one of those brands, Duncan or, uh, Bet MGM couldn't sign him up to some exclusivity. I feel like you lose some of your mustard if you water it down with. They show up in multiple commercials. And Usher showed up in multiple commercials, which was like enough Usher, but at least he's part of the game. Um, I just, I don't know how you don't lock up exclusivity if you're spending that much money. Lots of money at that point, John.

Yeah, at that point, exactly. Throw another two million dollars at Tom, what the hell. I thought it was a very effective use of celebrity in the bed MGM because I just think he, it's a good direct tie to the idea of winning

Yeah,

everybody knows who Tom is and everyone was tired of watching him win, unless you're a Patriots fan, in which case, screw you.

I mean the, the Duncan commercial was extremely gratuitous with celebrities, and uh But I, I just, I tell you every time I watch it, I think it's funnier and, Matt Damon playing off of his Good Will hunting line of how about them apples is

That was, that was great. That was a great line.

and he was just shaking his head. I thought it was, it was a good commercial. And you did, you know, Duncan is actually selling the, uh, those jackets today.

Of course they are. Genius.

Yeah.

That's great. All right. What was your biggest disappointment slash worst dad? Which one?

Well, there's a lot of bad ads, I thought from like Teemu to Bass Pro, uh, Skechers, like, I don't need to see Mr. T anymore, no one even knows who that guy is anymore. That could have been a commercial they did 25 years ago. Um, but I'm going to go with, microsoft co pilot. I feel like they had the ability to do something like a, the Google pixel commercial that you talked about where you're taking a concept like AI and showing all the great things that could have been done and they just like buried it. And the first half of the commercial was a build up and I just feel like it didn't pay off. And, not that I would expect Microsoft to be able to pull, pull, pull off an ad like that. Um. But it just, to me, I was just disappointed because that's the biggest thing people should be talking about. Uh, is there AI capabilities? I feel like they just didn't present it the right way.

Interesting. That's I think for me the biggest disappointment, was the FanDuel Kick of Destiny, the reaction spot. So, you know, Gronkowski missed the kick before the game, that was a bad spot too. But given their advertising budget, Like across the year and the experience they had last year was getting flamed for the way they executed the kick last year. I wouldn't have thought they'd step up to a different level, especially given that it was widening Kennedy was the ad agency, which is just an iconic shop doing amazing work for years and years and years for Nike and other brands. I just, I feel like lesson not learned and. Just not a great production. Not a good idea. It just, there was nothing to it there other than maybe a nice little, tip of the cap to Carl Weathers who passed away last week. I thought that was a big letdown that spot.

Yeah, you know, the, maybe the third time would be the charm next year. They certainly haven't gotten it right. Uh, what a wrinkle though with Carl Weathers dying after they filmed the commercial. Like you said, they handled it well, but, it's just not, that concept is just not working for them and they can't get it right.

This was a hard one for me, this category. I had, longest, longest list of nominees for this one. That Kennedy candidacy spot was horrific and Weird. as hell. I thought the homes. com, you know, the money they spent to have all those spots and they just, I thought they were just noisy and frenetic and bad. And how do you have Martin Scorsese in a spot for Squarespace and then not have the spot communicate the message of the value proposition? Just bizarro to me.

was a terrible, that was a terrible ad. Um,

Yeah. Great lead up. Great teaser. Terrible ad.

I thought I was going to hate the, the Pluto TV couch potato ad. Uh, but Growing on me a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there's a market for free television, with all the paid tiers out there, I'm surprised that they can afford a Super Bowl spot, but, uh, interesting concept, the couch potato, but, it's winning me over. Okay. All right. So what about, uh, best call to action? So when we say best call to action, what's the ad that makes you want to? Go look up the brand, take an action next, you know, what, uh, what do you think is the best example of that in an ad? and famously last year there was the QR

The bouncing QR code. Yeah.

yeah,

Entertainment is kind of the priority. Brand attribution is a real issue with so many Super Bowl spots, right? I loved it. It was funny. It was great. It was entertaining. It was impactful. And then like, what was it for? I don't know. It's a really common consumer reactioN.

Yeah, but I got one for this year. Um, DoorDash. So, if you're not, if you don't remember, the DoorDash one, they had a code to go to a website, uh, a promo code to, they have a collection of things where they're running a, they're running this campaign,

A sweepstake, where you get, you win everything that was advertised in the Super Bowl.

Yeah, which is an interesting concept. I thought that they kind of screwed it up by making it really difficult to enter the contest because the code was so long on purpose. interesting concept to kind of bundle as many ad brands as possible and try to take some off. That made me go to the site. But as soon as I got there, I was trying to watch the game. I couldn't sit there and put it in a code. I couldn't remember,

I feel like Uber Eats missed a really big opportunity with this, right? Because this was out there before the game, that they were going to be giving away everything that was advertised in the game. If I was Uber Eats, I would have created a commercial for DoorDash saying, we're giving away 100 percent ownership in DoorDash. And

you know, with the commercials coming out so early, why aren't other brands trying to hop on the opportunity? If you have a couple of days, you know, why don't you, why don't you do something like that?

well, by the time, by the time we get to the 10 million per spot threshold, maybe, maybe people will figure that out.

Exactly.

alright, so I. O. U. best call to action?

Yeah,

You're not gonna like my answer. Well, first of all, I recall very few that had an actual call to action.

true.

Um, and I know you didn't love the, Microsoft commercial. However, however, and this is not because the commercial did a good job of it, but the reveal of, the co pilot app was like an app. To let you have a single input for all the different AI tools, both text and image generation. Feels like a little bit of a game changer to me. I downloaded the app,

Oh, look at you.

right? And I took no other actions from any Superbowl ad. So, I don't know. I guess I have to say that. Putting my money where my mouth is.

All right. All right. I'll give it to you. The guy that creates the Super Bowl Bingo game at his party,

Hey, shut up. That was a

All right. What about, uh, rookie of the Year? which brand That has never advertised for a Super Bowl left. The biggest mark for you.

Uh, I thought Etsy did a really nice job. I love their concept. I think this Statue of Liberty sailing across the bay. I'm like, what are we good? What are we gonna send France? It's really funny. Love the concept. I think Placing a Super Bowl ad seems really incongruous with the product offering that Etsy has of like kind of local handmade craft stuff. That's kind of like their brand essence. Seems again, incongruous, but I thought that the actual, uh, spot was really effective

Yeah.

and funny.

I'm going to go with Poppy. Uh, the soda.

Good one. Yeah,

I really like that commercial. I think that talking about the evolution of soda and this not being, you know, your kids or grandkids soda, uh, is a really effective message at a time when, Coke and Pepsi proper are not advertising for the games. I just felt like the message of poppy, the cleaner soda, it's different. This is the last time you're going to be about, you know, sugar, water, basically. it was really interesting and I'm not really that familiar with the brand and it just kind of left a mark for me. So,

no, you're right. That was good. That was very effective. I thought,

all right, last one. That's music. That

Oh, best music. Um, I don't know about best music. I'll say best use of music for me was, Dove using Hard Knock Life. Um, yeah, it was a really good ad. Uh, may, maybe the best one if I think about it, but, most impactful to me. But, uh, I, the, the song itself was just, it was kind of a resting, felt a little bit outta sync with the rest of the music that was happening all around the game. Really nicely tied to the concept. the whole idea of vulnerability plus strength. Everyone knows that song. You can hear the lyrics. that's really effective.

I, I thought that, uh, Beyonce and the Verizon ad was a, was a, was a, especially with, uh, Tony Hale, um, perfect, duo there. and, and she was, nodding to new music that she was releasing, which she ended up doing, last night, but, um, I'm gonna go with one that I'll be severely judged for, which I just thought it was funny, was the, uh, Creed in the Paramount Plus commercial, where, um,

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was like, why is that there?

And this was the one that was released like a week ago. I felt like just, it was released so long ago, um, that I've seen it a million times now and, you know, Paramount's been doing these commercials during the super bowl where they have all their characters from all the different types of content they have. and so, the creed pop in was just even put that, that whole concept over the top

It was over the top. Yes. All

So I thought it was perfect.

right. All right. Well, those are all of our categories, right?

Yeah. Yeah. But overall, I think it was a, it was interesting game, uh, for the commercials, I, I feel like, Some of them made some big plays and, some of them were washouts, but, know, we didn't talk about the state farm with Arne Schwarzenegger and, uh, the chopper.

Joppa.

but I, I think, uh, left people talking, so

Well, they, that's, that's one thing the Super Bowl always does is gets people talking before and after about advertising. And that's not something that happens, really any other time of the year, I don't think.

Yeah, not like that, not when, not on a day where you, you finally have everybody watching at the same time, so.

well, I think this is a good opportunity for us to tease our next guest a fantastic, guest who was right on the edge of hopelessly unattainable in my mind. someone who is responsible for more commercials in this year's Super Bowl than any other agency.

Ooh, ooh, that sounds interesting.

Yeah. So come on back next time.

Alright, alright, let's shut down.

All right. See

Alright, see ya,

Happy viewing.

later.