Unforgettable Advertisement

Category: Super Bowl Ads

The Super Bowl is advertising’s biggest night. Read how Apple, Volkswagen, Budweiser, Google and even a single Oreo tweet turned game-day spots into stories people still talk about.

  • The Best Super Bowl Ads We’ve Covered, From Apple’s 1984 to Oreo’s Blackout Tweet

    The Best Super Bowl Ads We’ve Covered, From Apple’s 1984 to Oreo’s Blackout Tweet

    The Super Bowl is the one night when advertising becomes the main event. Here are the seven Super Bowl stories we have covered so far, each with a link to the full article and the video.

    Apple’s “1984” (1984)

    Aired only once, during Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984. Directed by Ridley Scott, it never showed the Macintosh computer it was selling.

    Google’s “Parisian Love” (2010)

    A love story told entirely through search queries, made in-house at Google by a small team called the “Google 5.”

    Volkswagen’s “The Force” (2011)

    A six-year-old Darth Vader, played by Max Page, tries to use the Force. Volkswagen posted it online four days before the game.

    Budweiser’s “Brotherhood” (2013)

    A trainer and the Clydesdale he raised, set to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” It topped the USA Today Ad Meter that year.

    Oreo’s “Dunk in the Dark” (2013)

    Not a commercial at all: a single tweet posted during the stadium blackout that was retweeted almost 15,000 times.

    Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry”

    Betty White ends up in the mud in the ad that gave the campaign line “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” one of its best-known moments.

    Always’ “Like a Girl”

    A Super Bowl ad that turned a common insult into a rallying cry.

    Want more? Browse the full Super Bowl Ads category, or explore the Viral Ads and Emotional Ads categories.

  • Oreo’s “Dunk in the Dark”: The Tweet That Became a Super Bowl Ad

    Oreo’s “Dunk in the Dark”: The Tweet That Became a Super Bowl Ad

    The ad was a tweet, so there is no video. Here it is as Oreo posted it:

    Most Super Bowl ads cost millions to make and millions more to air. One of the most talked-about ads of Super Bowl XLVII was not a commercial at all. On February 3, 2013, after halftime, the lights in the New Orleans Superdome went out for about half an hour. At 8:48 p.m., Oreo posted a single picture to Twitter with the words “Power out? No problem,” and a line that became famous: “You can still dunk in the dark.”

    It looked spontaneous, but it was prepared. The agency 360i had a war room for the game with about ten people in it, including writers, designers and strategists, and staff at Kraft, Oreo’s parent company, were part of the approval chain. The account of the night in Digiday’s oral history says the creative director Michael Nuzzo had the post assembled in under a minute, and the wording “You can still dunk in the dark” came from a Kraft brand manager during approval.

    The result was out of proportion to the effort. The tweet was retweeted almost 15,000 times, and Oreo’s Twitter following grew by about 8,000. The next day the Huffington Post wrote that one of the most buzz-worthy ads of the game was “a mere tweet from Oreo during the blackout.”

    The lesson of the tweet is not speed alone. Oreo had built a team and an approval process before it knew what would happen, so it could act the moment something did. Many brands have tried to copy the idea since, and it works best when the approval process is built for speed, as Oreo’s was.

  • Budweiser’s “Brotherhood”: The Ad Where a Horse Remembered Who Raised It

    Budweiser’s “Brotherhood”: The Ad Where a Horse Remembered Who Raised It

    A trainer raises a Clydesdale foal from its first wobbly steps, working with it every day until it is ready to join Budweiser’s famous hitch. Three years pass in a single cut. A truck arrives to take the fully grown horse away, and the trainer is left standing alone in the field, proud but clearly empty without the animal he raised.

    He spots a newspaper headline announcing that the Budweiser Clydesdales are coming to Chicago and drives into the city to see the horse one more time. Standing at the edge of the parade route, he watches his horse pass by in formation and turns to leave, assuming he has not been noticed. Then the Clydesdale breaks from the group and gallops back to him, exactly as it used to when he called it as a foal, while Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” plays over the reunion.

    The 2013 Super Bowl spot, called “Brotherhood,” was made by the agency Anomaly and directed by Jake Scott. Horse trainer Tommie Turvey worked with eight Clydesdales for two weeks before narrowing the cast down to three for the final shoot, and the production moved between Budweiser’s Warm Springs Ranch in Missouri, Thousand Oaks in California, and the streets of downtown Los Angeles standing in for Chicago.

    The ad topped the USA Today Ad Meter for that year’s Super Bowl and had racked up close to 12 million YouTube views within two months. Budweiser later ran a fan contest to name the foal from the commercial, and it became known as Hope. It remains one of the clearest examples of the brand’s long-running trick: never once showing anyone drink a beer, and still making the whole audience feel something.

  • Google’s “Parisian Love”: The Love Story Told in a Search Box

    Google’s “Parisian Love”: The Love Story Told in a Search Box

    The screen shows a single Google search box and nothing else. Someone types a search about studying abroad in Paris, and a story begins to unfold one search at a time. The searches move from simple things like entertainment and cafes to more permanent ones like jobs and a church, and wedding bells are heard. The last search, over the sound of a baby crying, is “how to assemble a crib.”

    The spot ran during Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, the game in which the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-17. It was made in-house at Google by a small team known as the “Google 5,” recruited from ad and design schools, rather than by a big agency. In a game full of celebrities and jokes, it had no actors, no voiceover and no slogan, only a search field and soft music.

    It worked because the product was the story. Every search showed a small feature of Google in action, and the audience felt what was happening to the character without being told. Comscore, which tests ads for effectiveness, gave it a score of 51, in the top fifth of the more than 8,000 ads it had evaluated, and credited its use of music and its clear demonstration of the product.

    The ad was also strategic. Bing was pushing its “decision engine” identity at the time, and Google answered by presenting itself as a warm, trusted friend rather than a machine. “Parisian Love” is still one of the best examples of a tech company making people feel something, and it does it in sixty seconds without a single feature list.

  • Volkswagen’s “The Force”: The Super Bowl Ad Starring a Six-Year-Old Darth Vader

    Volkswagen’s “The Force”: The Super Bowl Ad Starring a Six-Year-Old Darth Vader

    A small boy in a Darth Vader costume marches around the house trying to use the Force on everyday objects, and nothing happens. Then his father arrives in a new Volkswagen Passat, and the boy raises his hand at the car. The engine starts, because his father has used the car’s remote keyless system, and the boy is stunned at what he thinks he has done.

    The ad ran during Super Bowl XLV on February 6, 2011. Its agency was Deutsch, and the boy was six-year-old Max Page, who reportedly had never seen Star Wars. He never takes off the mask, yet his tiny gestures and disbelief carry the whole story.

    Volkswagen took a risk that was unusual at the time and put the film on YouTube four days before the game. The gamble worked: it had about 1.8 million views by the next morning and millions more before kickoff, and it became the most-shared Super Bowl ad of all time. Then it played to the huge TV audience anyway, so viewers already knew and loved it.

    That release plan changed how brands treat the Super Bowl. Advertisers now tease and post their ads early instead of saving the reveal for the broadcast, and “The Force” is the reason. It also shows what makes a great ad: one simple joke, a memorable character, and a product feature explained without a single spec sheet.

  • Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry”: The Ad That Put Betty White in the Mud

    Snickers’ “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry”: The Ad That Put Betty White in the Mud

    Betty White, then 88 years old, gets tackled face-first into the mud during a backyard football game — and it’s the funniest thing on television that night. The line that sells it isn’t even about White. It’s what a friend says right before: “You’re playing like Betty White out there.”

    For Super Bowl XLIV in February 2010, Snickers and agency BBDO New York built a simple sketch: a grumpy, clumsy teammate named Mike is dragging down his friends’ pickup football game, so badly they compare him to the elderly actress currently getting flattened in the mud beside him. One bite of a Snickers bar later, Mike is back to his younger, competent self — and his girlfriend on the sidelines just sighs, “Mike! Come on.”

    The ad was an immediate sensation, dominating morning shows and Super Bowl ad rankings the next day and reintroducing Betty White to a generation that barely knew her — momentum that helped fuel her surprise casting on Saturday Night Live weeks later. Snickers turned the one-off joke into a permanent tagline, running “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” spots with a rotating cast of celebrities for more than a decade after.

    The campaign drove nearly 16% global sales growth in its first year and an estimated $376 million in incremental sales within two years, making it one of the most commercially successful Super Bowl campaigns ever run. Betty White, for her part, spent the rest of her career as one of America’s most beloved comedic actresses — mud and all.