The Super Bowl template is an obstinate beast

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker.’ So, God made a farmer.”

We were well into a game none of us really cared about, and well into our cups, because that’s how most Super Bowl parties are: loud, boozy, with only the most casual attention paid to what’s on the TV. 

When it was over, we laughed at how effectively a spot for Dodge trucks had shut us all up. 

Several of us were advertising practitioners who shushed the room during the commercial breaks, but that only lasted until the beer kicked in. By the second half, the broadcast had become video wallpaper. Until this. I’ve never seen an ad silence a room so absolutely. The old found audio with the ministerial voice and analog hiss changed the ambience in the room, and drew us to the simple slide show of earnest farmer portraits. It was the slowest of rolls, and we were all transfixed for precisely two minutes. 

When it was over, we laughed at how effectively a spot for Dodge trucks had shut us all up. 

Above: 2013's Dodge spot is one of the few examples of Super Bowl spots that stopped a room in its tracks. 

This was in 2013. Since then, there have been plenty of Super Bowl spots that meet the appropriate criteria for entertainment, but you rarely see one that’s as viscerally different from the noise that surrounds it as God Made a Farmer. 

Jest practices

For decades, our industry has studied, decoded, and satirised the tropes. It’s a football game with a massive audience, so what’s the right thing to do? Jocular comedy with celebrities. 

I can think of no other context or category where the norms of the 1970s, when 'Tastes Great' and 'Less Filling' first duked it out, persist to this day. 

That’s the template, with a short list of optional elements:

• People with insatiable appetites
• People with IQ deficits 
• Hotties attracted to normies
• Anthropomorphised animals 
• Babies with middle-aged voices 
• Sight gags 
• Pratfalls
• Chirpy dialogue 

Year after year we wonder who will master this template, and who will break it. The latter does happen, but the former dominates. I can think of no other context or category where the norms of the 1970s, when 'Tastes Great' and 'Less Filling' first duked it out, persist to this day. 

Above: Are there exceptions to the Carstens' Super Bowl rule? Not as many as he'd like, but yes, such as Dove's Self-Esteem Project.

The collapse of contrast

It’s the rare client that asks for the unfamiliar. The CMO who says “make me uncomfortable,” who's willing to risk incremental gains for surprising outcomes, either has an airtight relationship with the CEO or is trying to maximise their short tenure. 

With most, there’s a gravitational pull to emulate a brand’s competitors. The automotive client envies the way their rival filmed a vehicle cutting across the California desert. The CPG client drools over an adversary’s cheese pull. The financial client wants their sailboat too. When they ask us to replicate, we push back with basic marketing concepts like positioning, differentiation, standing out in a sea of sameness, or swimming in a blue ocean.

We try to convince the bill payers that 'breakthrough' matters to their business objectives, not just our trophy shelves. Except when it comes to the Super Bowl.

In terms of context, we remind our clients that our consumers flip, skip, scrub and scroll through a bajillion messages and images every waking moment, disinclined to give us a precious nanosecond of their attention. And we try to convince the bill payers that 'breakthrough' matters to their business objectives, not just our trophy shelves.  

Except when it comes to the Super Bowl. Here, it’s the high-pressure effort to capture attention that makes everything feel the same. We have a global audience that cuts across every demo and psychographic, and yet our ads speak to them like they’re one, big monoculture. Because when you spend this much money on just one airing, there’s a different kind of risk. You’re afraid of not being loud enough, so the threshold for outrageousness goes up; but the tolerance for contrast does not. 

It’s a game of one-upmanship within a fixed set of rules. My reprise of a famous movie scene is funnier than yours. The protagonist in my ad suffers more outlandish bodily harm. I’ll see your dancing bear, and raise you a canceled celebrity. We’re suddenly afflicted with the same myopia as the client who wants their own Jake from State Farm.