2024 Super Bowl Ads - Winners and Losers

Why the Catholic ad made my WORST list (even though I'm a devout Catholic) and why the most annoying ad made my BEST list.

For anyone new here, I’m the founder of Woo Punch, a brand consultancy rooted in evidence-based brand design. I write about the evidence that debunks brand purpose, differentiation, brand love, loyalty marketing, customer personas, color psychology, mission statements, customer engagement, AdTech, and “hustle culture.”

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THE SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL MYTH

The most incredible Super Bowl ads are clever, emotional, funny, and inspirational.

We’ve all bought into this myth. But does it hold true, considering what we’ve learned about consumer behavior from marketing science, behavioral science, and advertising psychology? Was 2011’s VW ad “The Force” effective at selling VWs? Or is Temu’s annoying ad from this year a better (and more realistic) standard for advertisers to aspire to?

Which ads will help the brands being advertised sell products, and which ads might simply help the creative agencies behind them win awards?

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THE 5 KEYS TO AN EFFECTIVE SUPER BOWL AD

I believe there are 5 keys to an effective ad based on the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s research into marketing effectiveness, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s research into behavioral science, and Robert Heath’s research into the psychology of advertising. These 5 keys are Distinctiveness, Consistency, Broad-Reach, Category Entry Points, and Attention.

Certainly, other factors can go into whether or not an ad is effective, but the following 5 keys should be the primary objectives of any effective ad.

Each key is not created equal so I gave them different weights. For example, if a Super Bowl ad is clever and funny (scores well in Attention), but the brand being advertised is lost in the mix (scores poorly in Distinctiveness), that ad will have a lower grade than a boring but well-branded ad. That’s because Distinctiveness is far more important than Attention.

You can read more detail about these keys in my Super Bowl article from 2022 but I will summarize them here.

To grade this year’s ads, as always, I assigned the following percentages to each key:

DISTINCTIVENESS - 65%

The first key factor for an effective Super Bowl ad is distinctiveness, and I estimate that distinctiveness accounts for up to 65% of an ad’s effectiveness. If an ad isn't strongly linked to the brand being advertised throughout using distinctive audio, thematic, and visual cues, it will essentially be a waste of money. We won’t know who was advertised.

Despite this, many brands sacrifice these cues in favor of emotional narratives, virtue signaling, or humor. Advertisers often treat ads like short films aimed at winning creative awards, not tools to sell products. This is a mistake.

CONSISTENCY - 20%

The second biggest factor for an effective Super Bowl ad is consistency. I estimate consistency accounts for up to 20% of an ad's effectiveness.

If the brand being advertised has never been advertised before, or the brand has consistently advertised, but its Super Bowl ad is dramatically different from all of its other ads, consumers will find it hard to link the ad to its correct brand.

BROAD-REACH - 8%

The third factor is broad-reach. As a whole, broad-reach is more important than consistency and sometimes even distinctiveness. I estimate that broad-reaching advertising channels account for as much as 80% of advertising effectiveness in some cases. But here, I'm grading content, not advertising channels.

As a result, I estimate that broad-reaching messaging or content accounts for around 8% of a Super Bowl ad's effectiveness relative to all other key factors. Instead of catering to a specific demographic or psychographic, Super Bowl ads should target all category buyers with their messaging and content.

CATEGORY ENTRY POINTS (CEPs) - 5%

The 4th most significant factor for an effective ad is Category Entry Points (CEPs).

Rather than differentiating your brand, you should try to tap into why consumers buy from your category in the first place before they even consider brands. Most consumers don’t perceive the differences between brands regardless of how hard a brand tries to highlight those differences. This approach can be futile as a result. By prioritizing CEPs the goal is to simply be considered in various buying situations.

Again, I explain this in more detail in my 2022 article.

While CEPs are extremely helpful, they take a lot of time and repetition to build. Because of this, I'm grading individual ads here without considering a brand's overall advertising, so I estimate CEPs account for around 5% of an ad’s effectiveness during stand-alone Super Bowl ads.

ATTENTION - 2%

Finally, attention is the least important (but still critical) key to an effective ad.

While marketing gurus and the general public think attention is the most essential key for a Super Bowl ad, attention is complicated and misunderstood. There are several types of attention and not all are good when it comes to advertising. High attention can even have a negative effect on sales. I estimate that attention accounts for around 2% of Super Bowl ad effectiveness.

My estimates for each key aren't an exact science, and there are additional keys that can be helpful that I don't discuss here, but I wanted to grade these ads on the most critical factors.

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MY GRADES FOR THIS YEAR’S SUPER BOWL ADS

MY TOP 5 BEST

Strengths:

• The Reese’s product and distinctive brand are skillfully woven throughout the ad, ensuring that viewers instantly recognize it as a Reese’s commercial.

• The strategic cuts between scenes—alternating from screaming and cheering to other captivating moments—grab the audience’s attention and encourage them to look up from their screens for enough time to process the Reese’s bran assets.

• Will Arnett’s recognizable voice has consistently reinforced brand familiarity for years now.

• The ad is carefully crafted to resonate with a wide range of demographics. It avoids anything that might turn off specific groups, making it universally appealing.

Weaknesses:

• While celebrities are often used in Super Bowl ads to create buzz and connect with audiences, celebrities are ill advised as spokespeople. Celebrities can never be exclusively associated with a single brand. Their multifaceted lives and aspirations extend beyond being mere brand spokespeople. When seeing a celebrity on their screens, viewers can easily mistake what they are seeing for a number of things other than your brand. Especially if that celebrity has more fame than most.

  However, in the case of Reese’s, Will Arnett isn’t exactly an A-list celebrity and he serves as only the voice for the brand, not the face. This approach is much better as many people won’t recognize Will Arnett’s voice in the same way they will recognize his face.

  For as long as Will Arnett is the voice of Reese’s and he never becomes controversial, this approach is working for now. Although it’s always better to have an unknown, yet distinctive, actor as your spokesperson like in the case of Flo from Progressive or Jake from State Farm.

Strengths:

• If you are going to use celebrities in your ads (which isn’t advised; see weaknesses for the Reese’s ad above), you better smother them in your distinctive brand (assuming you have one). Dunkin’ does a great job of that here.

• This ad might be one of the few genuinely funny ones of this year. Matt Damon balances out Ben Affleck’s over the top humor pretty nicely.

Weaknesses:

• The broad reach here is limited. I would wager that Bostonians and those who dislike Bostonians won’t appreciate all the Boston references. Additionally, viewers like myself, who aren’t familiar with Ben Affleck’s love life, might miss the context.

• I would have preferred the entire story to revolve around actual products rather than Ben Affleck and J-Lo’s relationship. The reference to “last year she came to my work” remains unclear for me and others like me. I’m assuming this is a reference to a previous news story?