“We had an emotional tenor to the work that was very patriotic, nostalgic. It felt kind of like we were licking our wounds,” said Pete Harvey, partner/creative director at barrettSF in his assessment of this year’s crop of Super Bowl spots.
“With the recession, the economy in recovery, coming out of a war, it was like we could be American again and be proud of that–we saw that reflected in the Budweiser ‘Puppy Love’ spot, Chrysler, and the Budweiser commercial about the soldier coming home,” continued Harvey. “There was a lot of flag waving, an acknowledgement that we’ve come through tough times together. And all of this didn’t seem like all that a deliberate effort. It’s just when you look at the body of spots as a whole, these same emotions came through. It’s quite a departure from the kick-in-the-nuts Bud Light humor. Things this time around were more deeply thoughtful.”
Harvey’s comments caused me to re-think my take on this year’s Big Game ads. While hardly a stellar body of work, there was something comforting about the mix of commercials.
The sophomoric, lowest common denominator and sometimes mean spirited humor of years past was no longer part of the equation.
Indeed there’s something to be said for focusing on what unites us. After all, that’s what the Super Bowl is all about as a medium–a rare, shared experience capturing most of the country’s eyeballs. It’s a far cry from the fragmented media landscape which can insulate us from one another–and even worse at times serve as a spawning ground for polarization.
Divisiveness has become an industry on TV. “News” channel shows that brand the liberals or the conservatives, depending on your political stripes, as ruining America (in part fueling the back and forth on the Coca-Cola Big Game spot “It’s Beautiful”) have grown in prominence, raising the decibel level and diminishing common ground.
Then you have the steady diet of reality series where one clique or person denigrates another, providing an exercise in pettiness, nasty exchanges and materialistic values that serve as sport.
Fragmented media tend to fragment us. So on the Super Sunday that brings viewers together, it’s only fitting that the commercials reflect at least some of the shared values that unite and uplift us.
