During 2020, monitoring creative messaging became more focal than ever, with brands and agencies navigating uncharted territory in how to communicate through a global pandemic, recurrent social issues, and a divisive political climate.
Most brands were careful not to say anytihg about the pandemic or current events in their Super Bowl ads. Only two advertisers, Bud Light and Bass Pro Shops & Cabela’s, directly made reference to the challenges of the past year.
Bud light in their Seltzer Lemonade’s ‘Last Year’s Lemons’ ad called 2020 a “lemon of a year”, and after some gags full of lemons raining from the sky causing any kind of heavy dammages, the brand turns bad lemons into positive remembering the saying ” if life gives you lemons…make Bud light Seltzer Lemonade”.
The audiovisual piece has been conveived by Wieden + Kennedy for the first product of the brand in the hard seltzer lemonade category, which was launched short before Super Bowl LV, but not in the game.
The other advertiser, who dared to reffer about 2020 pandemic, has been the outdoor retailer Bass Pro Shop’s subsidiary Cabela.
“In these trying times, we need nature more than ever. We need nature to remind us that like a sunrise or the turning of the tides, these challenges will pass,” says a voice over in the 60 sec ad conceived by the founder of the company, Johnny Morris and produced in-house with the creative support from the agency Kuhl-Swaine.
A great message of hope for an advertising segment specially bearing the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and confinement measures.
Marketers stayed mostly silent on current events, but the casting analysis by comScore and Hive showed sustained efforts to promote gender equality and diversity & inclusion in this years Super Bowl ads.
This next-day research relied on metadata created using Hive’s proprietary computer vision models and Hive’s consensus-driven data labeling platform which leverages a distributed workforce of more than 2 million registered contributors.
Image over the headline.- Caption of the Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade’s ‘Last Year’s Lemons Super Bowl LV ad. © Wieden + Kennedy / Anheuser Busch-Inbev.
Related Eastwind Marketing links (comScore Analysis Super Bowl LV):
Related external links:
To read the whole analysis, clic here
Bud Light Seltzer Lemonade’s ‘Last Year’s Lemons’ (video)
Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s Super Bowl Commercial 2021: Get Back to Nature (video)
Related Eastwind Marketing links (Super Bowl LV analysis):
Super Bowl LV.- In-game exposure got the lion’s share in screen time
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