Discussion of superbowl ads/halftime?

There was some mention of ads and TS sightings in the “Game Room” watch along thread, but I didn’t see any overall discussion of the “non-football” aspects of the broadcast. Anyone else interested?

My wife and I watched the 1st half and the halftime at my sister’s house. After the halftime, we decided we’d seen enough football, so we called it a night. I hear a football game developed a couple of hours later? :wink:

The Superbowl is pretty much the only football we watch in a year, and we watch it mainly for a glimpse of current society/culture/marketing. Same way we watch some awards shows, SNL… And, as usual, the SB reinforced how out-of-touch we are, and how much we are NOT most companies’ target audience. :smiley:

This morning we were discussing the most memorable ads. Seemed to me like Tom Brady was in several ads. Is that his “thing” now? The Dunkin Donuts ad was the one I remembered the most clearly. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m likely to break my decades-long streak of not entering a Dunkin shop!

Saw a post somewhere today that said, if you are spending $100 million on SB ads instead of building homes for the homeless, you read the wrong book. I thought that on-the-nose.

I always find those talking babies (for some investments or something?) kinda creepy.

Let’s see, I also remember Jeff Goldblum advertising online services for both apartments and - apparently - houses. And Lionel Messi shilling for Michelob - with a Ted Lasso cameo. And a bunch of ads for Temu “shopping like a billionaire” - which none of us really knew what it is.

When Common appeared on an ad (I forget for what), I realized I had thought HE was going to be the halftime star. The 4 of us watching had no idea who any of Usher’s “guests” were. Looking after, I suppose I shoulda guessed Alicia Keys. And I believe I had read the names of others like H.E.R. At one point, my sister said she recognized one of his songs. There seemed to be more “going on” with the spectacle than I remembered from past halftimes. All the dancers, gymnasts, rollerskaters, marching band. I felt like when I was a kid at a 3-ring circus. I always felt those somewhat stressful, as I did not know what I was supposed to be focussing on.

How would you characterize Usher’s music? In my ignorance, I had expected rap, but instead it seemed - what? Pop? R&B? The music was fine - not my cup of tea, but fine. But the overall vibe struck me as - um - somewhat low key. Not knowing any of the music, it seemed like a lot of slow or mid-tempo songs one after another. Was it “exciting” to folk who knew/enjoyed the music?

Oh - final thought. Man, that guy with the face tats who sang America the Beautiful. Quite a look. And I always think it a tad odd when they introduce the sign language interpreters for the songs (nice gauges on the one guy), but then never show them again. I think they introduced 3 different interpreters before the game. Always strikes me as a sorta meaningless gesture to suggest they are being inclusive. Why is closed captioning insufficient?

Final thought - I always think a flyover over a domed stadium kinda a silly gesture.

That does seem to be a trend for you.

But alas no, Usher is not a rapper.

Anyway, I thought it was a fun halftime show. Of course I am quite familiar with Usher so I was probably part of the audience they were aiming for.

I also loved Luda’s crazy boots.

Thank you for monitoring my “trends.” Which seems to be a trend for you. :roll_eyes:

Usher is an R&B artist. The show was aiming for a 90’s/early 2000’s audience. My friends (we’re all about 40-45 years old) were going nuts.

The face tattoo guy was Post Malone.

Which reminds me of the other face tattoo guy, from the Jennifer Aniston UberEats commercial. Jelly Roll, a recent country artist. That whole commercial was hella funny. But I guess it wasn’t brand new for the Super Bowl? People saying they already saw it.

I don’t think the Skechers commercial is getting enough love. I thought it was the best written one of the night! “There’s no T in Skechers!” “Fool, Mr. T is always in Skechers!”

I also thought the Michael Cera for CeraVe was quite clever and random.

Dan Levy and Heidi Gardner (SNL) for Homes.com seemed messy to me as one ad but it was funny to see the subsequent ads.

Don’t recall the UberEats/Sketchers/Homes follow-up ads. Do you recall were they after the halftime? My wife enjoys the ads, but after halftime, I thought they had fewer if any new ads. (Plus I had eaten WAY too much and was happy to head home!)

The Michael Cera was for some sort of medicine, right? I thought it really odd as it was airing. I had never heard of the med, so I was wondering whether the entire ad was some kinda joke.

Our 4-some of viewers were from 62-70). Admittedly a bunch of clueless old farts (WRT many aspects of current/recent culture, at least.)

Didn’t see any of the halftime show, but the commericals were fairly good. Liked Budweiser going back to it’s roots with the Clydesdales and the Brady stuff wasn’t bad. Unlike @ZipperJJ, I thought Homes.com commercials were uniformly stupid and condescending, but maybe that’s just me.

The one that surprised (and confounded) me was the moderately amateurish one for Kennedy, trying to bring back the 60’s. More interesting is where they came up with the loot to buy a time slot; they sure didn’t spend it on the commercial (but I’m talking about it, so maybe it did succeed).

And lots and lots of Jesus…but done rather well, IMH (non-believer) O.

Press on.

CeraVe is a brand of skin creams & ointments. It’s pretty ubiquitous. They sell it at the grocery store. Here’s the ad.

Don’t Forget Uber Eats. It was on after half time.

Skechers ad

This one was almost offensive in some way. And the cut-and-paste job was terrible.

I got a chuckle out of the Beyoncé ad. Didn’t realize until I heard it on the radio that the last line about dropping new music wasn’t fictional, that she was actually releasing a new album.

I use CeraVe, so appreciated the ridiculousness of Michael Cera. (It’s a moisturizing skin lotion, @Dinsdale, BTW.)

Matt Damon was the best thing about the Affleck/J. Lo. ad. The Jennifer Aniston UberEats was clever, especially David Schwimmer’s bit at the end. I didn’t know the face tat guy, and missed all the pregame stuff, so I saw it and thought, “Man, Post Malone got fat”.

The Kennedy campaign ad I thought was some kind of parody, or a trailer for a movie. I can’t believe someone thought that would actually attract votes.

The half-time show was a confusing mish-mash for me. Not my kind of music, for sure. The religious ads were really annoying (Mark Wahlberg can kiss my ass); it occurred to me that any religious group that can afford not one but two Super Bowl ads should have some serious 'splaining to do. Some of the ads were amusing, some were just confusing.

That was an actual campaign commericial for the John F. Kennedy campaign in the 1960 election. On an episode of Mad Men, the Sterling Cooper execs screened it, remarking that it was unusual to advertise a candidate like a product, with a vapid commercial and jingle. (They were consultants for Kennedy’s opponent, Richard Nixon).

I though it was a neat touch they added a blurb at the end, something “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. approves this message”.

Yeah I know. Cutting and pasting his face into his uncle’s iconic old ad seemed offensive to me. Just blatant “I have nothing to run on but my last name.”

Yeah, that blurb seemed to flaunt that fact.

And which I am pretty sure does not involve kitting up the whole world with $9.99 Temu junk. Just saying.

Yeah. At least home base is just across town so they saved some expenses.

Interesting that with upcoming movie ads, most were just a quick teaser and then “the trailer is available for streaming”. Economical.

And I was annoyed at BobbyJunior for planting an earworm and for a very WTF moment.

The halftime was pretty good between Usher and his guests. Pretty much what I expected even if nothing epic. Did go “huh???” at the rollerskating.

Post Malone’s rendition of America the Beautiful was well done. I couldn’t help but comment to my wife, “Goddamn, that face is hard to look at.”

IMO, the “Jesus Gets Us” ads are not to convert new people, but for the CINOs who need to be reminded what Christianity really means, what it is about. And since faux-Christian fundamentalists have done, and are capable of doing, a lot of damage to this country, it could be money well spent.

Olde farte here: are there people that actually like that? Are there chicks that say, “man I’d do him! Tat faces are so dreeeaaaamy!”? :slight_smile:

We’re sitting there and my mom is like “Is he the roller skating guy?” and I (who came up in the Time of Usher) had no idea what she was talking about. Then the roller skaters came out, then User on roller skates and mom’s like “See! He’s the roller skating guy!”

According to mom he did a commercial on roller skates at some point so that’s how she knew. And according to my friend’s husband he’s quite well known for it, at least in Georgia where he went to high school. If you google it, there’s a ton of videos of him skating - except now the results are more full of him skating at the Super Bowl.

To be fair, I’ve never heard anything from Usher and wondered if he was a rapper. I had zero clue who he was other than “some guy who sings or something”.

Posted about this in the main SB thread, but it seemed to me that being able to control gravity at will in space like that would be infinitely more “internet breaking” than anything Beyonce could possibly do.

I didn’t watch the the halftime show at all. I didn’t watch any of the opening crap either. I think I was reheating pizza and watching YouTube at the time.