During the Super Bowl, companies spend millions of dollars on a 30-second advertisement in order to have a guaranteed high number of views and try to stick out to the viewers.
Prof. Thomas Herles teaches an Advertising and Consumer Culture class and incorporates the ads into his class time. He believes the “successful” ads are the ones that stood out and are memorable.
He said, “It is the one opportunity we’re all watching the same thing. The one question I like to ask is ‘which one stood out to you and why?’ because ultimately all of these companies pay millions of dollars and we’ve already forgotten most of them.”
Sophomore Morgan Plitnick said her favorite commercial of the night was the Dove commercial. This advertisement shared a message that says to keep girls in their sports and support their confidence.
“The Dove commercial emphasized confidence in oneself and especially in young girls while also highlighting their dedication to their sport,” Plitnick said. “Body confidence is an important topic and Dove represented the importance of this and also instilled the power of not giving up.”
Senior Isabella Giardina who majors in strategic
communications, public relations, and advertising, enjoyed watching the commercials. She feels that studying advertising as a part of her major allows her to have a different point of view when seeing the commercials.
“I feel like being a student in media and advertising we notice things that others wouldn’t notice and I try to look for the intent of that commercial,” Giardina said. “I try to understand what angle that company was going for and how it was executed.”
Based on her knowledge from her studies, her favorite ad of the night was the Kia commercial. In the commercial, a girl was performing her figure skating routine and showed a missing seat where her grandfather would have been. It then shows the dad and daughter in the Kia car driving to the grandfather’s house for him to watch her routine through the window.
“I loved the Kia commercial because of the storyline behind it. It’s hard to create an emotional story with only 15-30 seconds that somehow relates to a car brand,” Giardina said. “I think Kia did an amazing job and this is a perfect example of using pathos in advertisements to appeal to an audience.”
Prof. Debra Danowski, who teaches multiple public relations and advertising classes said she likes to incorporate the Super Bowl ads into her class discussions when appropriate.
Source: AP News, via Frito-Lay.
She said, “Having students watch advertisements as part of a class allows students to critically evaluate the messages in these advertisements to determine whether or not these ideas are valuable to society. It also allows for discussions about persuasion techniques as well as advances in media production methods.”
Sophomore Isabelle Ricks said that her favorite ad of the night was the Michelob Ultra ad, which featured professional soccer player Lionel Messi, because she enjoyed watching one of her favorite players on the big screen.
She feels that the advertisements are just as much a part of the day as the game.
“The Super Bowl ads are known for being lavish and funny, so I really look forward to seeing them each year,” Ricks said.
