Bad Ads: Super Bowl commercials aren’t nearly as good as everyone claims.

I’m not a football fanatic — I am one of many who watches the Super Bowl solely for the ads.

Normally, commercials interrupting a certain show or broadcast isn’t appreciated — but the Super Bowl is the one exception. Each year Super Bowl advertisements are expected to live up to a certain entertainment standard, and they usually deliver. 

But this year the one part I looked forward to was ruined — I was shocked at this year’s advertisements lack in quality and creativity. Each commercial seemed to replace humor and clever content with a celebrity or pop-culture reference.

The commercials had a common theme of laziness by using a celebrity as a crutch to make up for the advertisement not having any actual good content or commentary. For example, the Proctor and Gamble commercial relied on the appearances of Sofia Vergara and Rob Riggle — if it weren’t for them being sloppily thrown in the mix, it would have been even worse. 

Instead of the falling into their own category of greatness, this year commercials fell into the your-every-day-ad category.

And this year people have come to their senses and recognize the poor quality of the Super Bowl commercials —  with help from the bad commercials themselves and the many social media posts ripping them apart as the night went on.

The commercials didn’t have any meaning to earn the praise most Super Bowl commercials do. When Mountain Dew saw the opportunity to advertise its new “Mountain Dew Zero,” they somehow felt it necessary to base it off of Stephen King’s “The Shining” in the commercial. “Jack Torrance” went on and on about the new drink during his violent range as he sought after “Wendy Torrance.” The commercial ended with a punchline of Wendy claiming she was thirsty, and unlike the horror movie, it ends with her thirst being quenched. 

And don’t get me wrong, I love “The Shining” and think it’s a great movie. I just think Mountain Dew used the concept of a well-appreciated movie to cover up the true emptiness and ill-creativeness of the commercial.

These days, with Netflix, Hulu and other streaming apps, audiences are rarely exposed to commercials — so it’s occasions like the Super Bowl where companies have the best opportunity for their commercial to be seen.

With all the coverage you would think they would want to make the best commercials they could. Actually, this year, it seemed to be the opposite. But luckily for these lazy advertisement companies, the fun party atmosphere hypnotized the audience into actually enjoying the dry commercials and laughing at the poorly constructed banter between their favorite celebrities.

The commercials this year set a new low as they desperately failed to make relatable content, come up with a catchy line or include likeable celebrities.

And I have to admit, I didn’t like any of the commercials. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be Planter’s Baby Nut commercial, where Mr. Peanut dies but is then replaced by a newborn Baby Nut. But this example still shows the lack in creativity and originality.

While Baby Nut was incredibly cute, I was initially blinded by the cuteness of the fact that this has been done before: replacing a well-known character with a baby. And of course it was well-received in the past with Baby Yoda and Baby Groot — but I couldn’t help but think of these characters when Baby Nut was introduced. 

I think the commercials are a nice way to bring people together during the Super Bowl — especially the non-football watchers. But there has been too much praise for the mediocre acts. Brands need to start putting in a little more effort and truly think about their audience. Please, I’m begging you, please give me back my good Super Bowl commercials.