Don’t eat lava. Seal as a seal. Disembodied eyebrows. Disembodied mustaches. Able-bodied tongues. From Reese’s and Mtn Dew to Pringles, Little Caesar’s and Coffee Mate, humor was in full swing in the food & drink space for Super Bowl 59. And not just any kind of humor, but a very specific and beautifully one-note strain.
In some ways, it’s a style that feels a little throwback — a nod to simpler advertising times when you stuck a joke, landed it and walked away with a mic-drop of brand accomplishment. But the quick-pop, sticky-visual, hammer-it-home work we’re seeing feels less like a nostalgic impulse as a response to the marketing world that we call home today. Because the simple fact is that the Big Game isn’t the moment it used to be. In an always-on climate where brands can cause a stir — and reach a huge audience — on any day of the year, it’s one moment in a sea of many. And if you want to maximize that moment, you’re wise to treat it as such.
You’ve seen brands adapting to this reality over the years, building more and more upfront into Super Bowl work to make up for the night’s dwindling oomph. This year, Coors Light owned that space with its “Mondays” campaign. And they did that by understanding that very reality: that a brand can have a Super Bowl-sized moment any time they please, if the idea is sticky enough and dials into a cultural connection. Coors Light (and Mischief) used the game night to reinforce the notion that the day after is a terrible thing, not to introduce that notion. In the weeks before the game, they released dribs and drabs of earned-first thinking that spoke to a reality we all understand – from typos to bizarre self-care objects. Then they used game day to pop back into our mental feeds with a one-gag wonder: sloths as Monday-morn vibe.
The takeaway is as straight-up and punchy as much of last night’s work. From sloths to ‘staches, it was the quick, the smart, and the simple that really capitalized on a moment that’s fun-but-fleeting.
