Worst Super Bowl 53 Commercials

Story posted February 5, 2019 in Arts & Entertainment by CommRadio Arts & Entertainment Staff.

Every year the Super Bowl is one of the most watched events on TV. With the game goes a host of brand new, very expensive advertisements from the nation’s largest companies. As is the case with every year, a few companies trail all others on the grandest stage:

Audi: Cashews

Super Bowl 53 fans were expecting two high-powered offenses to clash as “boring” and “non-suspenseful." The game itself was a low-scoring defensive battle, and the halftime show left fans feeling confused and wanting more. Pair this with a disappointing batch of commercials and the outcome is an entertainment nightmare. There were some commercials that stood out and made an impression to viewers, then there were some that did not deliver. One of the ones that stood out as a disappointment was the Audi commercial for their electric cars. The commercial begins with a man reuniting with his grandfather and is gifted an Audi e-tron.

The commercial very briefly highlights the features of the futuristic electric model of their sedan, before the man is awoken by receiving the Heimlich maneuver and coughing up a cashew. The overall production of the commercial was great, but the main punchline of their bit did not make much sense. It would have made a lot more sense for Audi to focus on highlighting the many features of their electric models that will be arriving for the spring 2019 season, but instead they tried to go with the viral approach with comedy.

– Connor Trask

Michelob ULTRA: The Pure Experience

While ASMR has been around for nearly a decade, it’s becoming a current trend for YouTubers across the globe. ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, and is usually done as an audio stimulant that can relax the listener. Nobody ever expected to hear an ASMR during the 2019 Super Bowl, but it happened . . . and for beer of all things. The commercial begins loud and fast, the cameras shooting through the mountains only to fall silent and the camera to go still on a shot of Zoe Kravitz with two microphones and a beer, where she begins the audio experience. It’s a well done commercial, and it is interesting to see when one can mix together two separate categories and combine them into an ad or a promotion for a company or product. However, these two do not go together at all. Hearing and tasting are two of the five senses, but when promoting the taste, or even sight of a new, organic, light calorie beer, ASMR is not the way to do it.

– Lilly Adams

TurboTax: RoboChild

In one of the more frightening and confusing advertisements this year, TurboTax reminds us that lifelike technology is not all that is expected to be. In the commercial, an inventor shows two of his friends his newest gadget: RoboChild. The robot has a horrifying synthetic face of a child adorning it, and when asked what it wants to be when grown up, it simply responds that it wants to be a TurboTax live CPA.

RoboChild is then told that is impossible, as it is not human and cannot experience emotions properly. The robot then responds by “crying,” which is soon revealed to be a laughing sound, an obvious fault in the robot’s programming. TurboTax has done an impressive feat by not only giving the viewers the creeps during the game, but also to make potential customers completely uninterested in their product. Hopefully next year there will not be any creepy or unsettling appearances in the commercials. For now, however, TurboTax takes home the creepiest and worst advertisement.

– Jack Grossman

Planters Peanuts

The majority of the advertisements that ran during the game were bland, forgettable and riddled with dry humor. There were a handful of advertisements that fit that mold, and a good example would be the sorry commercial that Planters Peanuts put out. The Planters commercial was a skit how the Planters Peanut would drive around and save people, like retired baseball player Alex Rodriguez, from eating gross snacks like kale chips.

Just like the kale chips, the commercial itself was bland. It seemed like a poor effort to make peanuts relevant for the Super Bowl, even though the main staple is chips and dip. The commercial missed on all of its jokes and was even completed with random sidebar commentary from actor Charlie Sheen, who has not been relevant since 2010. Arguably the best part was the fact that Planters paid up for good special effects and seeing the peanut-mobile make a jump in slow motion. Overall the commercial was a money-dump in an effort towards relevancy, but it just ended up being forgettable.

– Connor Trask

 

 

Connor Trask is a senior majoring in telecommunications and minoring in business arts. To contact him, email cstrask97@gmail.com.

Lilly Adams is a sophomore majoring in film/video. To contact her, email lillyadams11@gmail.com.

Jack Grossman is a junior majoring in telecommunications. To contact him, email jackdgrossman@gmail.com.