Advertisers at this year’s Super Bowl will focus on humour, music and pure entertainment, an advertising creative with skin in the game has told SportBusiness Sponsorship.
Thirty-second spots on national network CBS are thought to be worth between $5m (€4.4m) and $5.5m each during the match.
Andreés Ordóñez, chief creative director at the Energy BBDO agency, said the country had “gone through a lot of emotion” in the last 12 months, and that television commercials that lighten up will get the biggest bang for their buck on Sunday.
Apart from his own campaign for ‘Avacados from Mexico’, Ordóñez said the campaign featuring Steve Carell by NFL partner PepsiCo will grab a lot of attention during the four-hour Super Bowl broadcast.
The Pepsi ad, which name-checks ‘Coke’ in the opening seconds, has already aired and caused controversy.
“The insight is that people normally ask for a Coke and are then asked if a Pepsi is okay is true,” he said. “Instead of taking the backseat, Pepsi are turning it into a positive and giving you all the reasons why Pepsi is okay, so I think the insight is great.”
Ordóñez expects that Coca-Cola, headquartered in the Super Bowl host city Atlanta, will activate around the city and the stadium, with the battle between the two cola brands generating good PR for Coke.
Other brands to look out for using humour as a motif, he said, will be Expensify and Skittles.