The LVIII Superbowl Ads
maslansky + partners
The language experts from maslansky + partners take on the smartest, savviest, and sometimes stupidest messages in the market today. CEO Michael Maslansky and President Lee Carter bring their experience with words, communication, and behavioral science to the table — along with a colleague or client — and offer up a “lay of the language.” Their insight helps make sense of business, life, and culture, and proves over and over again that It’s Not What You Say, It’s What They Hear™.
Join Lee Carter, Keith Yazmir, and Will Howard in this special episode of HearSay as they delve into the world of Super Bowl ads. They’ll debate which ads truly stood out, not just in terms of popularity but in their messaging impact. From breaking down language to assessing brand impact, this episode explores the ads that left a lasting impression on viewers during the biggest advertising night of the year.
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LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
Lee Carter’s book, Persuasion
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HearSay Language Moments
SuperBowl Ads Transcript
Lee Carter:
They said what? Welcome to hear. Say, a podcast from a language strategist at Maslansky and Partners, where we give our take on the strategy behind the smartest, savviest and stupidest messages in the market today and what you can learn from them. Our philosophy is it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. And that’s why we call this Hearsay. I’m Lee Carter, president and partner here at Maslansky and Partners. And I’m joined today by two of my colleagues, Keith Yasmir and Will Howard. And we’re going to dig into talking about one of our favorite nights, the year, which is Super Bowl ad night, where so many brands get out there and try to get their message across. And we have a lot to say today about what’s stuck out. And some of it might surprise you because I think it’s not necessarily the same ads that you’re hearing about from the ad meter and others. We’re trying to talk about which ads really broke through from a messaging and a language perspective and had an impact on the way that we view a brand, the product or the companies that were talking about. So Will and Keith, welcome – and one of the things that we were really excited about going into this because there is a lot of coverage about how companies were going to deal with the fact that the economy is a number one concern. And a lot of people are feeling as if their money is not going to go as far as it used to. So the expectation was we’re going to hear from a lot of the advertisers even in some of the preview ads we expected it to come through and it just didn’t come through as loudly as we expected it to. So I want to start with you, Keith. You had a couple of ads that stuck out you from that perspective. Tell me about it.
Keith Yazmir:
Yeah, so I thought it was interesting. We really thought there was going to be a lot more, but kind of in the spirit of what we do here at Miss Lansky and Partners, we think about kind of how do you frame issues more broadly? There were two that stuck out to me. One was the T -Mobile Magenta status ad, because what they were doing is instead of saying hey, here’s what you should aim for Here’s what you need to do to earn loyalty and then you become this special preferred customer of ours What they were saying is instead of going up there Let’s bring that down here so that everybody is actually a VIP. I think they had a pretty amusing ad for it I certainly laughed and I always like seeing Bradley Cooper with his mom. They do a lot of fun things together but in general, the framing was luxury is you as opposed to you trying for luxury which in years past is really what the feeling has been more about and the obvious parallel to that is the team who add which was similar ads that they did last time but their entire ethos their tagline is shop like a billionaire right it’s not that you are aiming to be something different it’s that you are you and guess what. In this world, in this age, you can shop like a billionaire. And it’s a very interesting way to frame a message, much more inclusive, of course, but also I think serves brands in this economic climate very, very well.
Lee Carter:
So both more aspirational as far as the economy goes. Now, Will, I know you had a couple of other ads that stood out to you.
Will Howard:
I think the greatest achievement Temu pulled off with their ads was most of America had never heard of them and now people know they can afford four Super Bowl commercials. So clearly this is a real company. I mean, I personally had never, so I was like, that’s my big learning is like, oh, this is a thing, I guess, if they have that much money. I couldn’t tell you anything about what I’m supposed to know about them. But for me, the only ad that I liked that touched on the hypothesis that we’d read was we are in a time of pessimism and division. And people are feeling like just because the economy is good doesn’t mean their lives are good and they’re feeling that gap. We thought we were going to see companies kind of touch on the situation that we’re in and try to reckon with some of that in a variety of different ways. The only one that did it at all explicitly that I liked was the Popeyes ad about Ken Jeong being woken up in a freezer tank. A couple like after having been frozen for 50 years and he’s like you must have woken me up because there’s a better chicken wing and he has it and the chicken wings great and he says what else have we achieved and the doctor just gives him a look like let me tell you like and just the nod to like there’s a lot going on but hey at least these chicken wings are good I thought was the proper lane for that company as opposed to some sort of any sort of broader statement about how I should be thinking or feeling right now.
Lee Carter:
Ha ha ha! That was clever. That was really clever. I wanna talk to you guys about the language in the Super Bowl ads and who really stood out. So, Will, I’m gonna start with you this time.
Will Howard:
I want to talk about the Volkswagen ad. I think for their new electric bus was ultimately the I think the endpoint of the ad, but I thought the execution was exceptional. There are a number of things that they did right. I thought they evoked kind of Americana and nostalgia quite effectively for a company that people don’t necessarily associate with as being an American brand. Obviously, I thought they had a pretty clear point that they were making around electric vehicles, trying to make clear that it was an evolution and not a revolution, trying to make it feel like a continuation and an approachable piece of technology. Technology as opposed to some totally new and different thing. But the thing that they did that was my favorite thing and it was a small thing and I bet a lot of people didn’t even notice it is something that I’ve been talking about for years. I wrote a blog post about this I think like six or seven years ago, which is how the single most underused piece of real estate in advertising is like disclaimers and fine print. Because at one point at the bottom of the screen it says, please do not attempt unless you’re living in the 70s, 80s or 90s. And it was in the same font as do not, driver, close course, do not attempt. But there’s, I think there is this deeply held idea that when a company shows you an ad, the ad is a projection and the fine print tells you who they really are. And so if your fine print is also making the same point as your leading message, I think it just ratchets up subliminally, the authenticity of the ad in a really significant way.
Keith Yazmir:
It reminds me a little, Will, of our customer communications practice, which is turning things like billing and other things that companies have to send out into marketing kind of engines that actually support and drive their brand, not to do a shameless plug for Miss Lansky and partners.
Lee Carter:
So Keith, I know we’re always laser-focused on language. What was your favorite messaging language-focused ad of the night?
Keith Yazmir:
My favorite language messaging focused ad a night, no real surprise for those that were watching closely on the ads was Disney+. And I thought it was just such a wonderful reminder of why we focus so much on the power of language to actually change minds and drive new behaviors. For those of you who are trying to remember what the Disney Plus was, it was a bunch of text. And it was just changing text of famous lines of all the movies you and I all love. Right? And it was like, use the force and all of these things. And it was just a line, white background, another line, white background, another line. And then it ended with Disney Plus. And it was a fascinating way to show that. It’s the content. It’s the feeling that you get. There was not one celebrity in it. There was not one visual image in it. There wasn’t a special effect in it. There wasn’t a car chase. There were just the words. And what a wonderful contrast to Paramount Plus. Similar, both pluses selling fairly similar actual content. However, they completely left behind any sort of here’s what you’re getting and focus solely on here’s the faces you’re getting. Here’s the famous people that are going to be reminding you of those. Now you can argue about the decisions that both made. I don’t think the Paramount Plus was one of their finer outings and I’ve heard a lot of criticism about what they ended up doing but it was just a really interesting contrast of saying here’s the emotion that immediately gets you. You see one of those lines you remember it. Often you remember when you first heard it. And versus seeing Patrick Stewart, who is wonderful, wonderful, great Shakespearean actor. It’s just a very different feel. So I thought that was a great language moment.
Lee Carter:
I love that because we talk so much about how messages can get lost in these advertisements. And in that case, the message wasn’t lost, neither was the brand. Took it away, you’re going to remember it, and you’re going to associate the brand with it. So I thought it was a really, really well done ad as well.
Will Howard (11:28.568)
I just want to put at the bottom of that stack the Pluto TV ad that was growing potato, human potato, couch potatoes. I think it went in the opposite direction of trying to be tongue -in -cheek and instead of Disney reminding us of all the highest aspirations of what movies can do for us, Pluto was like, look how kind of gross it is to see yourself reflected back watching large amounts of TV. I thought I had no idea what they were doing there and thought it went kind of in totally the wrong direction.
Lee Carter:
So you heard terrible things
Will Howard:
Yeah, they said you can be a couch potato. I said maybe I need to get back on the bike.
Keith Yazmir:
Yeah, it’s always it’s always a good strategy as we always tell our clients to criticize your customers as much as possible.
Lee Carter:
Ha ha ha ha!
Will Howard:
Mm, mm -hmm. Make them feel embarrassed for using your product.
Keith Yazmir:
A lot of what we do is we help our clients and partners reframe conversations, right? You’re talking about X, but actually you’re much better sort of talking about Y, and here’s how to do that. And I thought that there were three ads, maybe two and a half, that were interesting in what they were trying to do. The first one was the Poppy Soda ad. They were coming out to introduce you to this new soda. And they were saying, this thing that’s carbonated and has some sugar in it and is flavored and comes in a can that you kind of pull the top off of, it’s not soda. Soda is those other things that are too sweet and too gross and too many artificial flavors. We have natural flavors and we have some sugar, but not a lot of sugar. And we’re carbonated and we come in a can. And they were saying, soda is over there. We’re over here, which I thought was a very interesting attempt. I don’t know how well it actually worked. The other one, which I thought has not gotten enough attention, because I think it’s a very effective play, is Estella’s Pharma. That was out there doing their menopause medication. And they were contrasting hot flashes to not flashes. Now, obviously, it’s a classic language play, but I thought that not flash is something that actually is potentially very sticky. And I would bet that people who were in their target market, but that’s something that would really grab your attention, not Flash. That’s what I want.
Lee Carter:
I was struck by it. It was memorable for sure. And I think one of the things that we we often forget about is the absence of something like when you feel something, you know, you feel it, but we forget it’s like the kind of the moment that the Tylenol kicks in and your headache goes away. You’re like, oh. So I thought it was a really clever way because it plays in that feeling of relief of not experiencing the bad thing and I thought that was a really smart frame as well.
Keith Yazmir:
And lastly, just to build on Will, what you were saying about the fine print, I thought that it was cute, it was clever, but also I think it did some work for the Apple Music brand when they started out the Usher concert with the rated U for Usher may cause singing, dancing, sweating, gyrating, and possible relationship issues, which everybody now connects to the fact that as he was going on, he was slowly disrobing and ended up shirtless which had a mixed reaction in my home, but there were some very positive reactions to it. So I thought that was a cute way of taking advantage of something that people normally wouldn’t read. Obviously, you wouldn’t normally have that sort of motion picture association rating anyway, but I gave it a plus one for effort.
Lee Carter:
I gave it a plus one for effort, but I rolled my eyes at it. I gotta admit, it did not win me over.
Keith Yazmir:
Even when he took off his shirt?
Lee Carter:
Especially when he took off his shirt.
Will Howard:
Won me over.
Lee Carter:
Okay, so One of our favorite quotes here at Miss Lansky and Partners is from a movie, Trains Planes and Automobiles, where it says generally speaking when you tell a story should have a point to it makes it that much more interesting to the listener, and there are some ads that stuck out to us because ads especially should have a clear point and they left us with that thing to hold on to. So Will, why don’t you walk me through some of your favorites?
Will Howard:
Sure, I wouldn’t even say that the ads I’m about to run through were the best of the best. I thought they were just very solid and made a point really well. So for example, I think BMW stood out with Christopher Walken where it’s 30 seconds long of hearing his accent and it ends with there are no, there’s only one real one. There’s no imitations, right? And so I can take away from that a single clear point, oh, there’s a lot of other brands trying to be like BMW and no one else is succeeding. I thought Reese’s was really effective announcing their new peanut butter cup. It was clear they had a very simple point. We have a new product is exciting. Don’t worry. We’re not changing the other one. Right. You can very clearly say that they had thought through what point they needed to land, what objection they needed to worry about and address in and out got the job done. And it wasn’t the fanciest or the most pomp and circumstance, but it landed a point. And it’s something that I can take away with about your company. I feel like there was there were even some that were slightly less effective, but still, I thought even Mountain Dew or Oikos, like Oikos is like, if you eat this yogurt, you’ll be strong. Or Mountain Dew, you’re gonna have a good time. It was just Aubrey Plaza saying, you’re gonna have a blast again and again and again, right? They’re landing a point. I contrast that with some of the other ads, and I think I put State Farm with Schwarzenegger in this. I put not the Magenta status, but the other, I think there was another T-Mobile ad.
Keith Yazmir:
Yeah, the internet.
Will Howard:
The internet one, breaking the internet one, there was twisting the Oreo one. I put the Dunkin’ Dunkin’ I may be on the wrong side of this controversy, I was not a fan of the Dunkin’ ad, in a category that I would just call celebrity chaos. It was just a 30 to 60-second reel of famous people saying things and it’s just so unclear what I’m supposed to take away about your brand from a message like that.
Keith Yazmir:
I think it’s such a great point. It connects to something we talk a lot about and it’s so easy, right? We are all in this kind of marketing and communications field, but it can become an echo chamber. And it even becomes an echo chamber with our clients. So we end up being very attracted by these things that we get because we’ve been part of putting them together and we see the thinking behind it. But at the end of the day, where the rubber hits the road with any communications is what is that interaction with your intended target? And I think another one I would add to the list of ads that fell short was the Squarespace piece, which got so much publicity beforehand because it was Martin Scorsese’s first piece. It was kind of hilarious. I kind of liked where it was going. I almost thought it was one of the religious ads saying we’re all kind of confused and just stuck to our phones as opposed to looking at the world around us. And in the end, I still didn’t realize that, oh, right, that was for Squarespace. They’re putting it together that you need to know how to make a website so that the aliens can actually… way too much work to ask your audience to accomplish. You need to make sure that your fundamental message is hitting you in the face. And you can do that in lots of funny ways. And I actually, I’ve heard some criticism, but I will, I totally agree. I thought the Reese’s ad was, I thought it was hilarious. The reactions that people had, somebody was throwing up in a bucket, somebody was jumping out the window. You got the point. And it made me laugh.
Lee Carter:
You know, I want to talk for a second just about the excessive use of celebrities. I think we used to see ads with one celebrity, not last night we saw them with four plus celebrities. And one of the problems I think with using celebrities, you remember the celebrity and not the product. So it’s like, what was that Derek Jeter ad that I saw? Or there was that messy ad for a beer? I thought for Dunkin Donuts, it was clever because Ben Affleck is so associated with Dunkin Donuts, to begin with and Boston and they really dug into that and I thought it was clever and they’re selling their tracksuits today starting at noon and they are going to be having a Ben Affleck drink that people can go and get and I’m guessing for the target audience who is as into Dunkin Donuts as Ben Affleck is they’ll be making trips to the store just to check out the new beverage. But I do agree with you on so many of the other ads. It’s like the message gets lost in the chaos of the celebrity. And it’s like, what are you trying to say? What is the point of this ad? And I think it was lost in a lot of them.
Will Howard:
I do think one thing that stuck out to me about the Duncan one, I actually think the ad would have been more effective if they just took out the part where not only is he pitching this absurd bad idea that’s a boy band that’s got a bunch of famous Bostonians in it, but he’s also pitching it to his wife at her work. And so therefore bringing in this whole thing about his romantic life and his relationships. There’s this term and I think I first heard it from Saturday Night Live, some of the writers talking about the idea of a hat on a hat, which is where like you have an idea or like a bit in your sketch and then you try to put another layer on top of that bit to make another joke on top of it and it just gets convoluted and lost. And I felt like that ad was kind of a hat on a hat on a hat where there were parts of it that were really effective, but it was trying to do so many different things with Matt Damon undercutting it, Ben Affleck’s relationship, the Boston thing, the Brady thing, the Jennifer Lopez thing, I just thought it was too much.
Lee Carter:
You know, it’s kind of funny is when I was talking to my husband afterwards about the ads, I forgot that JLo was even in it. It was like that point was completely lost on me.
Will Howard:
And nothing against her, I just don’t think you need it for that to do what they were doing. It’s just an excuse to shoehorn another celebrity in.
Keith Yazmir:
Another, sorry, another thing about the celebrity piece is, is the celebrity working for you? Or are you working for the celebrity? And there are a bunch of ads, I mean, the Beyonce, and I would never say anything, a scant about Beyonce, believe me, and this isn’t about her, but I don’t think they used her well because that was a Beyonce ad. Now I love a good Beyonce ad, that’s fine. But it was a Beyonce ad. It wasn’t doing the work that they wanted it to do. Interestingly, I’m going to make a really weird kind of comparison to that. The Pfizer ad, which we haven’t talked about, which I thought from a just watching ads kind of for living this thing was a fascinating one because it was such a departure from almost anything else you’ve seen coming from pharmaceutical companies. I thought that it was an interesting idea wrapped in a not-so-interesting rapper. And that is because just like a celebrity if this was about Beyonce in one case, the ad was about Pfizer, whereas it should have been about science. Because the second half of the ad, when they started saying science is amazing and showing all these things, I was like, yeah. And you got Queen singing in the background and there was something really powerful there. Starting out with the founders of Pfizer in the political context that we’re in, where not a lot of people, one, know who they are. But secondly, it wasn’t meeting the audience where the audience is, which is, show me why you’re good. Don’t talk to me about you. Talk to me about what I care about. That’s the language of leadership. Don’t talk to me about you. Talk to me about what matters to me. And when they talked about science, they had me, right? And we do a lot of work with Pfizer. I’m a big fan of the company. I think that the ad itself could have done a lot more work for them by just focusing on that second half, which I thought was very powerful.
Lee Carter:
So speaking of some of the more serious ads, that being one of them, there was a variety of ads, I think, last night that were somewhat unexpected, although I think we had some media coverage expecting them to arrive last night. But let’s just talk about one that really did surprise me. And that I didn’t expect to see an ad for R .F .K. Junior square in the middle of the Super Bowl. I’m like, wow, he must be doing better at fundraising than I thought. But let’s talk about the ad and what you took away. I saw some hilarious coverage of it that said this is the ultimate nepo baby ad where the big takeaway is that he’s got really famous relatives who had great voices and were famous at a time that was a long time ago. And so I thought that was a funny take on it because the question is what do you take away from this ad? So Keith what did you take away?
Keith Yazmir:
Well, when we’re advising our partners, we always start fundamentally with the audience, right? Who are you trying to deliver this message to? And with that, I ended up scratching my head, right? Because for that, I would say you have three different audiences. You have the audience that has no idea that he’s running, which is not an unsizable portion of the population who I imagine you want to be telling he’s running and giving them a sense of why they might care. And for that, I think it did very little because it was probably very confusing. It was like, why are they showing all this old footage of, of, of Kennedy’s? Maybe I’ll go and look up what that was, but I’m pretty busy this week, and probably not. Right. Then you have the people who kind of know who he is but don’t really have a feeling either way. And you’re not telling them anything new. You’re just reminding them that he has a name that you’ve probably heard of before. And that mostly is associated with 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Doesn’t do you a lot of work. Then there are the people that actually know who he is. Either you love him and you love that ad and you were like, this was amazing. Either you already don’t like him and it did absolutely nothing to change your mind. So I thought it was interesting and from a technical perspective, I think there are some interesting things perhaps to talk about how to make an ad. But in terms of targeting, I’m not sure what they were out to accomplish.
Will Howard:
As far as I’m concerned, they achieved one thing, which was I would describe RFK as an afterthought in this election conversation so far, and I’m pretty sure yesterday not a lot of people ranging to no one was talking about him, and today a couple people are talking about him. So he’s made some progress in that regard. Call it a win.
Lee Carter:
There you go.
Keith Yazmir:
Or are they talking about JFK?
Will Howard:
Oh yeah, yeah, I know the second two letters, but…
Keith Yazmir:
It’s a great airport. Actually, it’s a horrible airport.
Lee Carter:
Do you know what’s funny is this morning I was on air talking about it on CNN and I said you know the JFK ad it just like slipped out that way but I was like gosh their names are confusing I was like no it wasn’t because it actually you forget who the ad was for just a moment yeah yeah yeah and I guess the family is up at arms about the use of it.
Keith Yazmir:
It’s what it was. It was a JFK out.
Lee Carter:
So I think there were some other powerful and significant more serious topics. There are a couple of ads for Jesus in last night’s and last night’s Super Bowl. And one of them, I thought, was really interesting because in recent years, I would say certainly since the rise of Donald Trump, but I think even before that. There’s been a real focus on the hypocrisy that exists in the Christian community and that you often hear people talk about how could you support somebody like Donald Trump and call yourself a Christian or how can you support hate and be a Christian how can you allow inequality or injustice and still be a Christian and one of the things that we often get asked is how do you overcome a narrative that’s so negative once it exists and I think one of the strategies you can do is like, you know what? I’m just going to go at it right out its head, face to face, and I’m going to own that. I’m going to own it. But I’m going to change your perspective. And so what did they do? They had an ad that was really focused on hate has no place here. And, you know, they sort of use that idea of what would Jesus do and Jesus wash feet. He didn’t hate. And I think there was just something really powerful and surprising to a lot of people. In fact, this morning we’re having conversations about I think a lot of people were surprised that was a message. What I think is most fascinating though is that there’s a lot of Christians who don’t like the ad because they say that Christianity went and got too woke, which I thought was hilarious as a reaction, because it is in fact using Bible verses to make the point.
Will Howard:
Hmm.
Keith Yazmir:
And it is kind of the original woke religion, right? Like that was the whole point.
Lee Carter:
How did that ad strike you guys?
Will Howard:
Mm-hmm. I think maybe it’s my skeptic brain that’s trained, but I just, when I see an ad like that, I can’t shake this feeling of like, okay, Jesus doesn’t run ads. Like Jesus himself is not buying ad time to tell me this, nor God. So who is this ad from and what do they want from me?
Lee Carter:
Fair. Fair.
Will Howard:
And the whole time I was waiting for another shoe to drop, like to fade to black and then say, you know, vote X person or do Y thing. Like I just watched the whole thing on guard. And when they made it through, I appreciated the message, but I couldn’t shake that feeling that I had been, somebody had tried to influence me.
Lee Carter:
I think that’s a valid point.
Keith Yazmir:
Yeah, I love that point. I think that, well, one, I’m certainly not the target for these ads, but it just makes me a little uncomfortable. And perhaps I’m just old-fashioned like that, but by mixing these media around, we’re running a glitzy Super Bowl ad about something that is the most intimate kind of personal emotional thing in many people’s lives. And it’s not by the way one thing there were Jesus ads there was we had Scientology we had that we had all sorts of other elements. We had Marky Mark. Right, who, who not only was running a Super Bowl ad, which again for me is a little discordant but advertising an app. So here’s your religion app.
Will Howard:
Hmm, another real religious figure.
Keith Yazmir:
And it just feels like it’s mixing these worlds that I know there’s a lot of good reasons for it. But for me, it’s a little just discordant. It doesn’t make sense in my brain. And I’m still very surprised to see them. I’m like, what happened to the Budweiser? Like, Clydesdales.
Lee Carter:
So to you, it should be the separation of the Super Bowl and the church.
Keith Yazmir:
I think there’s something very fun to play with there, right? Like, you know, if you talk about the central role that the Super Bowl plays in American life, it is a little like separation of church and state. It’s like the Super Bowl is America. All right.
Will Howard:
I mean during, I think you’re talking about separation of church and state farm for the ad time.
Keith Yazmir:
Ah, nicely played.
Lee Carter:
Well done, Will Howard. Well done. If anyone out there is ever looking for a good pun–
Will Howard:
or a bad one.
Lee Carter:
–Will’s your guy. So that’s our take on the Super Bowl ads this year. I think there are a lot of great takeaways. One, if you have a point, make it, make it last, let it stick and make sure that you don’t overcomplicate your message so you’re heard the way that you want to be heard. Thank you so much for joining Will and Keith. For more language insights and being in the loop on all the other fun stuff we’re doing follow us on LinkedIn @maslanskyandpartners and join our mailing list at maslansky.com/connect. That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more episodes of HearSay because when it comes to truly effective communication, it’s not what you say it’s what they hear.
