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Well, the Super Bowl this year
was a bit of a boring game, at least for three quarters. But
the other side of the Super Bowl
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every year is always the
advertisements and which company did the best and drew the most
connection with consumers. And a
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pleasure to talk about that with
Americus Reed, Marketing Professor here at the Wharton
School, and also co-host of the
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<i>Marketing Matters</i> podcast, which
you can listen to every week on
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the Wharton Podcast Network. Americus. How are you, sir?
Enjoy the game? Hi, Dan, I'm doing very well. It
was not an exciting game, like
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you said, but you know, as a
marketer, we're always ready for the ads. All right. So, what were your
general thoughts about the ads? And
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maybe even more so, when you're
getting ready for a Super Bowl, what are your expectations for
the ads?
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I love that question, Dan. I
think that— I mean, what I saw last night, I was, I dare say—
use the term underwhelmed. But I
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have to be honest, I was a
little underwhelmed. And that's not a bad thing. Because what I
think I understand now, Dan, is
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that the stakes are so high in a
situation where there are very, very few things where 100-plus
million people are going to be
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watching at the same time. And
so all of the companies, brands, products, services,
organizations, they realize that
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we really have to come with
everything we've got. And so it really raises the overall bar
such that nothing is
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outstanding, nothing is so super
differentiated that you're just so blown away. Because every
one, every one of these ads, is
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really trying to do as much as
it can. So I thought there were some good moments, but I have to
say that we've reached— for me,
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in my opinion, we've reached
kind of a plateau, in the sense of, it's just hard to do
something that's so incredibly
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interesting and differentiated
and innovative. Not a surprise that we saw as many ads
in and around AI that we saw?
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Yeah. I mean, we talked about
this last time on the podcast. Really thinking about
this notion of AI, and how is AI
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changing things? And you and I
discussed this. We said, listen, there's going to be a big
movement, if not already, to
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really integrate creative
outputs using AI. And so, you know, it's not surprising that
we saw— we saw that last night.
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It's a tool, and marketers are
going to be forced to use this tool and really try to use it
creatively. So that wasn't
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surprising. But I think we're going to see
more of this. You know, we're going to really see sort
of creative wars happening to
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see who can really use these
tools in the— in the best way
possible. Any ads really connect with you?
I mean, and even though it was a
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down year, in your opinion,
there's probably one or two that probably did connect. I know I
had a couple.
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Yeah, you know what? We were
kind of talking about this a little bit back and forth,
offline, Dan and I. I loved the
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Duncan's ad. I have to give
props. - Oh, absolutely. I mean, I know— there's something about
nostalgia for me. And by the
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way, that was a theme that I
think we saw a lot of last night. Like, nostalgia, whether
it be in the context of trusted
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characters that we've seen or
songs that we— that we know really well. We saw a lot of
that. And the Duncan's
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commercial, for me, had just
about every single character from my favorite portfolio of
shows that I could possibly
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name. And as I saw each one,
Urkel and Carlton and Sam from from <i>Cheers</i>. As they come in, I
was just like, "This is awesome."
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And so I had a really strong
reaction to that one. How about you? So, I loved the Lays commercial with
the father and daughter. The
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farmers. - Yeah. Nice. The— the Dunkin commercial,
I thought was great. The one that really, I think, connected
with me as well, and I was kind
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of a little surprised, was the
Kendall Jenner Fanatics ad. - Oh, interesting.
- Because that rumor
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of her having a negative impact on basketball players has
certainly been out there. - Yeah.
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And to see her kind of say,
"Okay, football guys, now it's your turn. That was kind of
funny to me.
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That was very funny, Dan. And
what I love about this, your point is another sort of theme
that I saw last night, and that
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is sort of humor. So, one of the
things that was very important is to try to strike the right
tone. And we see a lot of this
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sort of absurdist, what's been
called unhinged, kind of meme-erific, if you will, humor to
try to sort of make those points
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that you were describing in the—
in the Kendall Jenner ad. I also love the XFINITY Jurassic Park
ad, because I'm a huge fan of
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that— of that movie. And I just
love the way they sort of turned it around to sort of show,
"Here's what would have happened
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if you'd have actually had the
power to sort of juice the park," and it would have been a totally
different, completely different
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turn of events for the movie. So
that was pretty cool as well. So the— let me touch on the humor
component of it as well, and the
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dynamic. And I think
Budweiser is probably the example I want to use here,
because they have a variety
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of different brands. So last
night, they had an ad for Budweiser, which was the
traditional. The horse and the
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American Eagle.
- Yes. Then they had the Bud Light,
which was Peyton Manning, Shane Gillis and
other funny guys in an ad. - Yes. Yes.
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And so maybe because they have
the variety of brands, - That's a great point.
- they can play both sides
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of the fence a
little bit here, and it works out on— great. And maybe
there's an expectation of which
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brand is going to get which
component. The humor, or the— kind of the supportive, you
know, connection, the touch
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your heartstrings. I love that point, Dan, and I
think you putting it into the context of a kind of multi-
pronged strategy for Budweiser
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and Bud Light makes a lot of
sense, right? Especially in the context of Bud Light trying to
come back from the last few
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years of trying to deal with
sort of being in the crosshairs. - Yeah. So I love what they did there,
because to your point, they use
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a little bit of humor, but they
also— for Bud Light. But they also leaned in on this "made of
America." This was interesting,
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right? Made of America. And
you're watching this, you're watching the Clydesdale, you're
watching the American Eagle, and
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you're— they're trying to, like—
they're trying to, like, redefine and really recapture
that American identity. So, like,
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playing both sides here, and
like trying to sort of do a little bit of humor to sort of,
like, soften the blow
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here for what Bud
Light's been dealing with in several years past, but also
leaning in on to, "Hey, you know,
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we do have a sense of this
Americana that we don't want to let go of with respect to our
brand." I think it was a very
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interesting strategy. And I guess Levi's tried to do
that with their commercial,
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because it seemed like it was
just a variety of different generations of people wearing
blue jeans over the course of
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that company's time. Dude, I loved that commercial.
Recently— or it's, let's say, a
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couple of months back, we talked
to the former CEO of Levi's. And it's just, dude, the red tag.
It's iconic. And I was— I was
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counting, Dan, the butts that—
sorry for the— the butts that I could recognize in terms of, you
know, there's Bruce Springsteen.
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You know, you see this, like—
wow, this is super iconic imagery. And the notion of, you
know, your life is lived in
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Levi's just brought to a really
nice— a really nice crescendo. And sort of touching all these
famous people. I think George
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Michael might have been in this,
or a reference to him as well. And then to end it with Doecii,
sort of a more modern sort of
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current pop cultural icon,
really just well done. And just really capturing the historical
context of Levi's brand.
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Let me finish up with this. And
it's the dynamic between Pepsi and Coke right now. And you and
I talked about this offline. Is
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that, obviously they're playing
for the same customer base, but they're using— or at least Pepsi
is they're using— kind of some
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of Coke's backstory with the
polar bears to try and support their narrative. And we saw this
in another commercial where a
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Coke delivery guy was making a
delivery to a store, and all the Coke cans fell off, and he drank
a Pepsi instead. So that dynamic
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between those two companies is
very interesting. It's super interesting, Dan. I
got to tell you, you're my guy.
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I grew up in Georgia, so that's
Coke country. - Yeah. - And dear Coca Cola, shots fired. You have
24 hours to respond, because
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this is like— we're coming right
at you. We're gonna— we're gonna co op your polar bear imagery
and iconicness, and we're just
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gonna— we're gonna do battle
now. And so, Dan, the cola wars might have been revitalized last
night. So this will be very
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exciting, to see what happens and
what Coke's response will be, and sort of what the dynamic and
the competition will be moving forward.
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What do, then, companies expect
after they run an ad in the— in the Super Bowl? I love that question, Dan. So
here's the thing. So, what's
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happened in the past is, we have
this moment where all these folks are engaged in watching,
and you capture them in that
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moment. What we've seen in
marketing is that we've got a pre-build up to that. We saw a
lot of brands releasing ads,
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teasing ads, all these different
things before the big moment. Super Bowl. And then what comes
after. Here's the interesting
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thing, Dan. They've got to keep
this conversation going. They have to keep the water cooler
discussion. They want Dan Loney
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to come on his podcast and talk
about it. They need— they need to keep having the conversations
and discussions and elevation of
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and amplification of these
commercials, because it continues to breathe life into
those— into those creatives that
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we saw last night. And so this
is like a— this is a big event. This is a long-term horizon. And
brands are trying to really keep
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that energy, that kinetic
energy, going across this— this— timeframe, so that they can
continue to keep interest and
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get people to really focus in
and resonate with these different types of ads
that they produced last night.
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Always fun to talk to you, sir. Thanks very much. Thanks a lot, Dan.
Talk to you soon.
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Americus Reed, Marketing
Professor at the Wharton School and co-host with Barbara Kahn of
the <i>Marketing Matters</i> podcast
00:10:09
every week here on the Wharton
podcast network.