Who’s cutting onions?
Commercials during the Super Bowl have almost gotten as big as the game itself. Companies pay out the you-know-what for their short time in the spotlight during the “Big Game,” trying to win people over with their product/service and their message.
For the longest time, Super Bowl ads were going for funny and zany ideas, which produced some of the most memorable commercials of all time (first one that comes to mind for me is the ETrade Baby).
But in recent years, many companies have opted to go more emotional and serious with their Super Bowl spots. I don’t know what the metrics are behind that pivot, though I do know that I usually don’t want to wipe tears away from my eyes right after eating a buffalo wing (for obvious reasons).
Usually when I’m watching the Super Bowl with friends, I try my best to establish a “no talking” policy during commercial breaks (talking is allowed during the game). However, if I can tell that an advertisement is about to get sappy, that rule is temporarily lifted for the remainder of that ad. And yes, as surprising as this sounds, I do still have friends that want to watch the game with me.
With that being said, this new Cetaphil commercial that will air during the “Big Game” (nowadays, all of the ads are released before the Super Bowl) might be an outlier for me. It’s message is leaning into the emotional, and specifically tapping into the “Taylor Swift Effect” on the NFL this season.
You’d think that both of those things together would be bad news. However, I’ve got to admit the folks over at Cetaphil did a really good job with this one. In classic modern day advertising, you don’t really know what the ad is for until the very end (which I usually hate), but I’m going to let it slide this one time.
The commercial features a father and daughter who appear to have a somewhat distant relationship, and they are brought together through, you guessed it, Taylor Swift. She’s never mentioned specifically, but with the Chiefs color schemes, the friendship bracelets, and the way it’s presented, it’s obviously a nod to Taylor Swift’s presence during NFL games.
Check it out:
I’m not crying… YOU’RE CRYING.
This one will certainly hit home with some when it airs during the Super Bowl, and I’m guessing that another group of people that watch it will audibly groan and say something like:
“I can’t even get away from her during the commercials? The NFL is rigged, and Roger Goodell made sure the Kansas City Chiefs got to the Super Bowl just for stuff like this. Unbelievable.”
We all know those people, and every Super Bowl party will have at least one dedicated Taylor Swift hater.
And no, I’m not going to reference Swift’s “Shake It Off” right now, even though it would have been really easy to do so…
