After a day of reflecting on the best Super Bowl ads, I'd still argue that from a marketers perspective the M&M and Best Buy commercials were two of the best.
My assessment is based on a mix of how effective I think the commercial is across three dimensions:
- Grabs you're attention and entertains - nearly all Super Bowl ads did this
- Sells a clear product benefit that links with the brand equity
- Strong brand recall (e.g., you actually remember what brand the ad was from)
While many other of the Super Bowl ads did a good job across one or two of these dimensions, few delivered strongly against all of them.
Some of the best of the rest:
Samsung's The Next Big Thing super bowl commercial
The other interesting thing to note was how many advertisers chose to go with a long-format spot versus the standard 30 second ad. There were at least 5 commercials that pushed 90 seconds as advertisers took advantage of a captive audience to tell their stories and seek to connect with consumers in new ways.
