If you’re a brand, running an advertisement during the Super Bowl can be like stepping onto the world’s biggest soapbox. Each year, over 100 million people watch the Super Bowl. That’s a lot of eyes and ears susceptible to your message, should you choose to include one. If any of the following brands are looking to potentially heal the planet this year, here are some free ad ideas.
Taco Bell
In 2007, Taco Bell introduced the concept of “Fourth Meal” by way of ad campaign, presumably after some marketing suit shot down the slogan “Drunk Food” for being too sincere. More than a decade later, the recklessly inventive Tex-Mex fast-food chain has yet to make use of those hours between 4 and 6 A.M.
In this commercial, a taxi full of belligerent drunks rolls up to the Taco Bell drive-thru just as the radio clock strikes 4 A.M.
“Kevin, you idiot! I told you we should’ve called the taxi earlier!” one yells. “Me? Chris is the one who couldn’t find his shoes,” Kevin volleys. An increasingly contentious argument unfolds, just as a lively, chipper voice comes through the speaker box: “Welcome to Taco Bell, I’ll take your order whenever you’re ready!” Everyone in the taxi, the driver included, is speechless. The text “#5” appears on screen with no accompanying audio. Every American household will breathe a collective sigh of relief knowing that jobs have been successfully created.
Coors
Honesty has become somewhat of an antiquated notion in 2018 America, and beer commercials have a knack for coming off as particularly disingenuous. Budweiser routinely utilizes puppies and Clydesdales in their Super Bowl ad campaigns as if they’re product isn’t currently being vomited into a washing machine by some guy in a Gronkowski jersey. The marketing strategy behind Coors Light, however, is downright baffling. Everyone in any given Coors Light commercial is either windsurfing, spiking a volleyball, or scaling a snowy mountain.
The ad is simple: a young, adventurous mountaineer ascends to the frozen peak of Mount Robson in Colorado. He drops his gear in the snow, removes a single can of Coors Light from his backpack, and takes a sizable swig as he gazes down the 13,000 feet of conquered rock below him. He exhales a deep, visible breath. Brave. Heroic. The lengthy, arduous climb a small price to pay for such a majestic view. The guy then wakes up. It was a dream. He’s lying on his kitchen floor.
He has six missed calls and a lone text message that reads “ur paying for this screen door.”
Coors.
Brawny Paper Towels
One year ago, the world was introduced to the new Mr. Clean.
Viewer consensus was split. Some were on board. Some sat in quiet discomfort, uneasy with the sudden, jarring sexualization of a household cleaning product. Hopefully, Brawny Paper Towels offers up some sort of antithesis to this bizarre commercial on Sunday. In my proposed ad, a mom is looking after her energetic, raucous children on a Saturday afternoon. Uh-oh. One kid just spilled his grape juice on the counter. What’s a mother to do? In comes the Brawny Paper Towels lumberjack. No, not that one. Not the handsome, chiseled, burly face of the brand we’ve all grown accustomed to. No. Meet your new Brawny Paper Towel mascot.
“Looks like you could use some help,” he says.
The woman screams. “Who are you and how did you get in my house?”
“Grape juice on a white countertop can be a real pain in the ass,” he continues. “Not to worry. I’ve got just the paper towel for the job.”
The woman frantically corrals her children into a bedroom and calls the police as the new Brawny lumberjack struggles to tear open the plastic packaging on a six-pack of paper towels. He begins rifling through the kitchen drawers, finally finds the silverware, and uses a butter knife to puncture the plastic. We hear a muffled “Yes, hello… there is a man in my house pretending to be the Brawny paper towel lumberjack” coming from the bedroom. The Brawny lumberjack cleans up the grape juice and sets the roll down next to the paper towel holder. “This countertop marble?” he shouts.
The mom looks out the bedroom window. In the house across the street, a woman watches as a sexy Mr. Clean mops her dining room floor.
KFC
The lights are low. A pair of black dress shoes enters frame. We slowly pan up a crisp, white suit, complete with string bowtie. The new KFC colonel has arrived. Paparazzi have coalesced around him. Cameras flash. A woman in an “I HEART NASHVILLE HOT” t-shirt faints. We finally see his face. “Hey buuuuddy.”
It’s Paul Shore. We hold on his face as the voice-over announcer begins: “That’s right. The Colonel is Pauly Shore now. How’s that sound? Yeah? Because we tried Reba McEntire and you misogynistic assholes lost your minds. Well, guess what? It’s Pauly Shore now, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Eight-year contract. Remember Bio-Dome? Jury Duty? Yeah? Have fun remembering those every time you drive past one of our franchises, idiot. You know, Danny Trejo auditioned. Your new Colonel Sanders
could’ve been Machete, for Christ’s sake. Blew us away in the audition, in fact. But then we got a flurry of emails spewing vulgar, impossibly sexist language in regards to our first female colonel. Jesus. You’d think heavily-caricaturized brand ambassadors would be safe from you chauvinistic jackasses, but no. You ingrates. You absolute ingrates. When was the last new Ronald McDonald? Hmm? Does McDonald’s give you a new actor to portray their beloved mascot every year? That’s what we thought. So now, you get Pauly Shore. Good job.” Colonel Pauly then performs his “weasel” routine in its entirety.
