After 49 Super Bowls, the adver­tis­ing indus­try has pro­duced a lot of big game con­tent. And as brands and mar­keters gear up for the 50th anniver­sary of the Most Valu­able Day in US Adver­tis­ing, Momen­tol­ogy sur­veyed 50 mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als to see which ads stand out in their mem­o­ries – and why.

---

Some spots, like Coke’s Mean Joe Greene and Apple’s 1984, are endur­ing clas­sics. Oth­ers, like Volkswagen’s The Force, Google’s Parisian Love and Always’ #LikeA­Girl, are more recent inductees to the Super Bowl Ad Pan­theon that have each cut through the prover­bial noise in their own ways and estab­lished mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions with view­ers.

Then there’s Bud­weis­er, which seems to be in a class by itself. (Over and over, mar­keters not­ed they don’t drink the beer, but they still love the com­mer­cials.)

If there is a for­mu­la for suc­cess, these experts say it’s a mat­ter of strik­ing the right bal­ance between humor, dra­ma, ani­mals and kids. In addi­tion, to make a mem­o­rable impact, a Super Bowl ad has to arrest atten­tion in a visu­al or audi­to­ry way, tell a sto­ry and use emo­tion.

Here are the Super Bowl ads that have done just that.

---

Volkswagen’s The Force (2011)

Fred Scho­nen­berg, Founder of Ven­ture­Fu­el 
The ad was so warm, as it embraced fam­i­ly and the won­ders of our child­hood imag­i­na­tions that we all yearn to main­tain and revis­it. It appealed to moms and techies, while still being hilar­i­ous enough to keep the foot­ball fan mass­es engaged. Bril­liant­ly, it also showed off the tech­nol­o­gy of the car in a unique and sub­tle way. If I were Volk­swa­gen, I’d replay the ad this year giv­en all of the recent Star Wars love.

A theme that emerged from this ad was peo­ple walk­ing around try­ing to start their cars using “the Force.” Too bad Volk­swa­gen could­n’t mea­sure that in some­way. I know I mock­ing­ly tried to start every­thing with the Force – from my cof­fee mak­er to mak­ing the phone ring. Sad­ly, the Force is not strong with me.

---

Michael Bon­fils, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of SEM Inter­na­tion­al

It will prob­a­bly always be the Star Wars boy who starts the car engine remote­ly.

His WTF moment… was clas­sic.

---

Bruce Clark, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Mar­ket­ing at North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty

Fea­tur­ing the short­est Darth Vad­er since Rick Mora­nis in Space­balls: The Movie, this wide­ly praised ad tells the sto­ry of a child who knows if he just tries hard enough, he can har­ness the Force.

Dressed in full Darth Vad­er cos­tume, the increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed boy attempts to coerce an exer­cise bike, his dog, a wash­ing machine and a baby doll. The day is saved when, as the boy applies his final effort to the fam­i­ly Volk­swa­gen Pas­sat, his father sur­rep­ti­tious­ly uses his VW remote to start the car from inside their house, thus prov­ing once and for all that the Force is real!

---

David Leit­ner, Man­ag­ing Part­ner at Assem­bly

It plays off my love of Star Wars.

It plays off the abil­i­ty to con­trol the Force – which many peo­ple wish they had.

The ad shows off the fea­ture of start­ing the car with the touch of a but­ton – not quite the Force – but not an ana­log key either.

And, yeah, it’s fun­ny.

The theme of fam­i­ly in the ad appealed to me – in this case, the link­ing of old­er and younger gen­er­a­tions. The Super Bowl and Star Wars were both mem­o­rable moments of my child­hood and pass­ing that along to my kids helps to build a con­nec­tion, while reliv­ing old mem­o­ries and mak­ing new ones for years to come.

---

Kate Garo­fali­ni, Direc­tor of Mar­ket­ing at Dstillery
This is by far one of my favorite Super Bowl ads and not because I was a loy­al Jet­ta own­er at the time. This was the first time an adver­tis­er released an ad before the big game and the real­i­ty far exceed­ed their viral expec­ta­tions, chang­ing how adver­tis­ers approach Super Bowl Sun­day ever since.

With only a few days until it offi­cial­ly aired, it racked up more than 17 mil­lion YouTube views! It was a per­fect com­bi­na­tion: nos­tal­gia and humor of a child dressed as a noto­ri­ous vil­lain, endear­ing moments between a father and son, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Star Wars and a con­flict-to-res­o­lu­tion nar­ra­tive.

---

Greg Jar­boe, Pres­i­dent and Co-Founder of SEO-PR
One of the method­olo­gies for eval­u­at­ing video per­for­mance that has a lot of mer­it is the num­ber of times the con­tent has been shared on Face­book, Twit­ter and in the blo­gos­phere. This avoids the whole debate over the def­i­n­i­tion of a “view.” (Face­book says you pay for a “view” when a video is dis­played in a user’s news feed for 3 sec­onds or more, even if the per­son doesn’t actu­al­ly click on the video to watch with the sound turned on. With True­View in-stream ads, YouTube says you pay for a “view” when a view­er watch­es 30 sec­onds of your video – or the dura­tion if it’s short­er than 30 sec­onds – or engages with your video, whichev­er comes first.)

And accord­ing to Unruly, the most-shared Super Bowl ad of all time is Volkswagen’s The Force – with 5.4 mil­lion shares – from the 2011 Super Bowl. It’s also worth noth­ing that this Super Bowl ad gen­er­at­ed a 127 per­cent uplift in web­site traf­fic and drove the sale of 20,902 units.

The price range for a new Pas­sat five years ago was $19,995 to $32,950, so “The Force” drove from $417,935,490 to $688,720,900 in incre­men­tal sales. That makes it my favorite Super Bowl ad of all time.

---

Budweiser, Budweiser, Budweiser

Duane For­rester, Vice Pres­i­dent of Organ­ic Search Oper­a­tions at Bruce Clay

Damn it — I’m sit­ting here cry­ing rewatch­ing my fave videos!

What is doing this to me? Bud­weis­er ads…and I don’t even drink!

See, the Bud­weis­er ads with their draft hors­es, and espe­cial­ly last year’s ad with the pup­py that gets lost, are very pow­er­ful, emo­tion­al­ly attach­ing moments in adver­tis­ing.

Let’s look at the 2015 ad here.

Cute pup­py. Tough world out there. Dan­ger. Courage. Loy­al­ty. Fam­i­ly. Sup­port. All con­cepts that shine clear­ly through­out the adver­tise­ment. Yeah, every­one knows the hors­es haul the famous trail­er full of suds. But this ad isn’t about beer. It’s about us, the watch­ers, and what mat­ters to us. The ad attach­es the brand to con­cepts we hold dear, would lay down our lives for.

It’s a clas­sic sto­ry of what’s pos­si­ble when YOU don’t give up, and get a lit­tle help from your friends.

It helps more than a lit­tle bit that as we watch the pup­py, we anthro­po­mor­phize human feel­ings on the dog. It’s rain­ing, it’s cold — how mis­er­able! The wolf threat­ens from behind the tree, the pup­py stands tall and barks — how brave! Truth is, the dog isn’t like­ly as cold as we think it is and the pup­py does­n’t under­stand the dan­ger the way we do. This is nor­mal, though, as Amer­i­can con­sumers spent just over $60 bil­lion on pets in 2015. We love ’em, we lav­ish them. Last I checked, that’s almost dou­ble what we spend on chil­dren in the nation.

So, yeah, Bud­weis­er gets my nod for hit­ting so many home runs, and for so clev­er­ly attach­ing their brand to our hearts.

---

Jen­nifer Hoff­man, Glob­al Head of Part­ner­ships at Linkdex

They’ve had sev­er­al EPIC Super Bowl com­mer­cials that have gone on to spur entire cam­paigns for months if not years to come. Like the Bud­weis­er frogs – who doesn’t remem­ber laugh­ing at that one?

They sell beer, how­ev­er not a sin­gle one of their com­mer­cials talks about their prod­uct — it’s all about the brand and you will always remem­ber their brand and com­mer­cials because of the cre­ativ­i­ty behind them. And they tap into people’s emo­tions. If that pup­py com­mer­cial doesn’t tug at your heart­strings, then, well, let’s just say you prob­a­bly don’t have a pulse!

---

Budweiser’s Iconic Clydesdales

Alan Blei­weiss, Foren­sic SEO Con­sul­tant
Just about every Bud­weis­er Clydes­dale ad ever made. And I don’t even drink alco­hol.

---

Jes­si­ca Hoenes, Region­al Vice Pres­i­dent – Cen­tral at Dstillery

Before we had “The Great­est Show on Turf,” St. Louisans had Bud­weis­er, cre­ator of some of the most nos­tal­gic and icon­ic Super Bowl ads of the late ‘90s.

The frogs were fun­ny, but the Anheuser-Busch Clydes­dales are the stars of my favorite moments in Super Bowl adver­tis­ing. No mod­els, no flashy imagery, just pure Amer­i­cana with a focus on hard-work­ing Mid­west­ern farm­ers. When these ads played, peo­ple were silent.

The Clydes­dales were beau­ti­ful, they played foot­ball, and in per­haps their most mem­o­rable moment of all time, they brought tears to eyes as they paid trib­ute to 9/11 vic­tims and respon­ders. I was hap­py to see them make their tri­umphant return in last year’s Super Bowl and I know I’ll still feel a tinge of that St. Louis pride when I see their much antic­i­pat­ed sequel to “Lost Dog” this year.

---

Ash­ley Orn­dorff, Mar­ket Research Ana­lyst and Copy­writer for Visu­al Impact Group

My favorite Super Bowl spot (in this case, spots) of all time are the Bud­weis­er com­mer­cials fea­tur­ing the Clydes­dales and the series in recent years adding in pup­pies.

I don’t drink beer and I still love these com­mer­cials. For one, you can’t go wrong with hors­es, at least not for me.

As for wide appeal, they’re fun and enter­tain­ing (like hors­es play­ing foot­ball), they’re poignant and incite emo­tion (like the 9/11 trib­ute, tear­ful reunions and epic adven­tures for friends). These com­mer­cials make you laugh, they make you cry, they make you appre­ci­ate your friends – this is what makes them so pow­er­ful and so mem­o­rable.

---

Budweiser’s Whassup (2000)

Steve Jukes, Chief Inno­va­tion Offi­cer at Jum­ble­ber­ry

The first time I saw the Bud­weis­er Whas­sup com­mer­cial was dur­ing Super Bowl XXXIV in Jan­u­ary of 2000. I was a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent at the time and “whas­ss­suppppppp” became the de fac­to greet­ing amongst my group of friends for many months after­wards.

Per­haps it was because it was dur­ing a time in my life when I drank a lot more beer than usu­al, but I can’t recall any oth­er com­mer­cial hav­ing such an imme­di­ate and wide­spread impact on my social group.

---

Rob Gre­go­ry, Pres­i­dent of Sales and Mar­ket­ing for WhoSay
This cam­paign is a favorite because it res­onat­ed with a new youth­ful audi­ence and also had total cul­tur­al pen­e­tra­tion both nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. After the cam­paign aired, it was impos­si­ble to hear male friends every­where greet one anoth­er with­out say­ing the phrase.

The cam­paign became an indus­try award win­ner and ran through 2001. It was lat­er then devel­oped into a larg­er cam­paign titled, “True.”

---

Andrew Beck­man, Chair­man of Location3 Media

My favorite com­mer­cial is Bud­weis­er with Whas­sup and friends con­nect­ing via the phone. I start­ed doing the whas­sup with my friends.

---

Budweiser’s Frogs (1995)

Ben John­son, Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at HA Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing

My favorite Super Bowl com­mer­cial of all time has to be the Bud­weis­er Frogs ads.

This is one of the first com­mer­cials I remem­ber grow­ing up that real­ly took on a life of its own and out­side of the tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials spawned mer­chan­dise, cloth­ing and even com­mer­cial reboots lat­er on.

---

Rob McCar­ty, COO of Pop­Shorts

Upon the orig­i­nal suc­cess of the first ad, Bud­weis­er did a great job pro­gress­ing the sto­ry­line to include new char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions that kept audi­ences engaged. I still remem­ber most of those com­mer­cials to this day even though they were cre­at­ed in 1995.

Like the Bud­weis­er ad, the­mat­ic rep­e­ti­tion seems to be the name of the game for adver­tis­ers — why change some­thing that already works? By keep­ing the sto­ry­line sim­ple and cre­at­ing minor vari­a­tions to the orig­i­nal con­tent along the way and through­out the years, Bud­weis­er was able to keep their brand­ing in the fore­front of all spec­ta­tors.

I see this rel­e­vant to the snack­able con­tent mar­keters are cre­at­ing on social net­works such as Vine and Insta­gram today. Often­times, when mar­keters on these plat­forms find a theme that works, they keep build­ing the plot to intro­duce new char­ac­ters and sce­nar­ios that keep audi­ences engaged. They may be able to thank Bud­weis­er for a small yet pro­found sam­pling of that.

---

Budweiser’s 9/11 Tribute (2002)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2‑_qRS4Li7A

Max Cron, Cre­ative Strat­e­gy Direc­tor at Online Opti­mism

My favorite Super Bowl spot of all time is the Budweiser’s trib­ute to those that died on Sep­tem­ber 11. This com­mer­cial aired only once in 2002, but remains the most watched Super Bowl com­mer­cial of all time.

Per­haps I am some­what biased because I am from New York, but this com­mer­cial real­ly hits the spot. Bud­weis­er, a com­pa­ny whose com­mer­cials always have class, style and emo­tion­al attach­ment, did a great job show­ing respect to all New York­ers.

In adver­tis­ing, hav­ing com­mer­cials that peo­ple emo­tion­al­ly con­nect to is key to hav­ing them con­nect to the prod­uct. This advert cer­tain­ly hits that note and there­fore was very effec­tive.

---

Budweiser’s Puppy Love (2014)

http://www.hulu.com/adzone/591454

Kristin Bab­cock, Vice Pres­i­dent and Direc­tor of Paid Search at Cramer-Kras­selt

I know I am not alone when I say this but, I would have to pick Budweiser’s Pup­py Love from 2014. It pulled on your heart­strings and was just trade­mark Bud­weis­er. Plus, you can see the impact of it very dra­mat­i­cal­ly in Google Trends.

Since it’s been report­ed that they won’t use the pup­py this year, it will be inter­est­ing to see how peo­ple react to their ad.

---

Budweiser’s Lost Dog (2015)

Colette Trudeau, Search Direc­tor at Spark SMG

My favorite Super Bowl spot of all time is Budweiser’s Lost Dog ad. Who doesn’t love that moment when the Clydes­dales come run­ning up the hill to save the pup­py from the wolves? It taps all of the right feel­ings and for any brand adver­tis­ing dur­ing the game, why not incor­po­rate pup­pies? Instant audi­ence grat­i­fi­ca­tion, guar­an­teed.

---

Budweiser’s Brewed The Hard Way (2015)

Gary J. Nix, Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer at bdot

In recent his­to­ry, Bud­weis­er has been known for Super Bowl com­mer­cials with cute and cud­dly crea­tures. While they did have a pup­py in some of their Super Bowl XLIX spots, the one that stood out to me was Brewed the Hard Way.

This was the com­mer­cial where they made bold claims on what their beer was and what it was not. They stuck their flag in the sand and staked their claim.

Grant­ed, some peo­ple had a strong neg­a­tive reac­tion in real time, but I noticed that most, if not all, of those peo­ple were unhap­py because Bud­weis­er was talk­ing about craft and fla­vored beers in a less than good light. How­ev­er, that’s exact­ly what I liked. They were clear and con­cise regard­ing how they say they make their beer. They spoke to their audi­ence and there’s noth­ing wrong with that.

---

Google’s Parisian Love (2010)

Pur­na Vir­ji, Senior Bing Ads Client Devel­op­ment and Train­ing Man­ag­er at Microsoft

I like Google’s ad about the dif­fer­ent search­es. It told the sto­ry of some­one’s life jour­ney through their search­es. Very poignant.

---

Jon Gold­berg, Exec­u­tive Cre­ative Direc­tor at KBS

They were able to intro­duce an entire­ly new way to tell a com­pelling, emo­tion­al sto­ry through a prod­uct demo.

---

Quan Hoang, Cre­ative Direc­tor of Inter­ac­tive at HZDG

Google’s Parisian Love, which told a love sto­ry through the use of Google that still delights me to this day. The ad did a few things very well.

First and fore­most, it stood out from the clut­ter. Super Bowl spots are usu­al­ly known for their high pro­duc­tion val­ue or star appeal. Parisian Love had nei­ther but still crushed it.

The sec­ond thing it did well was use the brand’s prod­uct in a rel­e­vant and believ­able way. Prod­uct place­ment is usu­al­ly a sto­ry killer, but not in this case. If any­thing, it made the sto­ry.

The third thing it did well was tap into the roman­tic in all of us. The sto­ry was well writ­ten and uni­ver­sal. I’m pret­ty sure the moment after that ad played was an all-time record for humans to be col­lec­tive­ly day­dream­ing about love in Paris.

Go foot­ball.

---

Apple’s 1984 (1984)

John Gross, Direc­tor of Mar­ket­ing at Struck

It was so epic in its con­cept and pro­duc­tion — prac­ti­cal­ly ush­ered in the era of the Super Bowl TV spot all by itself.

---

Mike Gre­han, CMO and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Acronym Media

It rep­re­sents the dawn­ing of a new age in com­put­ing and it used “fear mes­sag­ing” to huge advan­tage, which has made it one of the few clas­sic ads that still gets dis­cussed now.

Not only that, it was direct­ed by Hol­ly­wood giant Rid­ley Scott, who is from my part of the world in the north of Eng­land, and his broth­er used to teach media class­es in the mar­ket­ing depart­ment at my col­lege.

---

Bri­an Her­sholt, Region­al Vice Pres­i­dent of Sales — East at Dstillery

I think it’s got­ta be the Apple ad from 1984. Maybe the most famous Super Bowl ad ever?

It was clear­ly ear­ly days for today’s most valu­able brand and was a launch­ing pad for Mac­in­tosh com­put­er. Plus the ad’s impact is still felt today.

---

Dirk Schwarz, CRO – US at Linkdex

It broke new ground and was epic.

---

Always’ #LikeAGirl (2015)

Clau­dia Page, VP and part­ner­ships at Crowd­tap

P&G real­ly nailed it with this cam­paign and showed the indus­try that large, estab­lished brands can adapt to the times and strike a cul­tur­al chord in a gen­uine way. What I like most about this is the insight that Super Bowl view­ing is tru­ly a fam­i­ly event and that includes par­ents and their young daugh­ters.

The cam­paign used a com­bi­na­tion of real­is­tic por­tray­al of their tar­get con­sumer and an empow­er­ing mes­sage to make a dif­fer­ence and ignite a social con­ver­sa­tion around the #LikeA­Girl hash­tag, which, more than a call-to-action, was a call-to-arms. The “Like a Girl” cam­paign helped pio­neer a wave of female empow­er­ment cam­paigns, which togeth­er have trans­formed the media land­scape and helped brands (final­ly!) catch up to shifts that were already well under­way in cul­ture.

---

Brent Csu­toras, CEO of Pix­el Road Designs

As we all know, Super Bowl com­mer­cials are some of the best com­mer­cials we see all year long, so to pick a sin­gle one as my favorite is very tough, but this is the one that is on my mind right now and is amaz­ing to me.

When I see this com­mer­cial it makes me hap­py, because I see an exam­ple of some­thing that a lot of brands are doing these days, which is using their pow­er and mon­ey to improve the social stan­dards that are hold­ing us back from evolv­ing into the pro­gres­sive future we all hope for. It is also a very vivid reminder of the pow­er we have to shape the future views of our chil­dren.

---

Coca-Cola’s Mean Joe Greene (1980)

Tom Lyons, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at HYFN

My favorite ad was the 1980 Mean Joe Greene Coke ad. I was old enough to already be dream­ing of play­ing foot­ball and young enough to not yet under­stand how bad of an ath­lete I would grow to be and how much I don’t love being pum­meled.

But, come on, it’s a kid and the guy’s name is Mean. That spells mag­ic.

Even today as a grown man, if Mean Joe Greene said hel­lo to me, I’d be so fired up. At the time, every sev­en-year-old in Amer­i­ca want­ed to be that kid. Want­ed to befriend Mean Joe Greene (again, his first name is Mean) with a Coke. In school, the social media of 1980, I remem­ber every­one talk­ing about it and then, well, I remem­ber Mean Jim Crat­ty beat­ing me up for not giv­ing him my Coke, but it was worth it.

But real­ly isn’t that ad what all of adver­tis­ing — regard­less of medi­um or event — is about? Hav­ing a view­er put his or her­self in that car, in that hotel, eat­ing that chip. And one more time it was a kid with a man whose name was Mean. Mag­ic.

---

Scott Davis, Chief Growth Offi­cer at Prophet

The ad blend­ed humor, emo­tion and Amer­i­cana into the sto­ry and the spir­it of it res­onat­ed uni­ver­sal­ly. It is still a stan­dard bear­er of great Super Bowl ads that many oth­ers mea­sure them­selves against.

---

Chris Hart, Head of Client Devel­op­ment – US at Linkdex

This ad was so pow­er­ful, it even became part of folk­lore — that he gave away his jer­sey and lost his pow­ers.

---

Monster.com’s When I Grow Up (1999)

Hilary McCarthy, Vice Pres­i­dent of Zen­zi Com­mu­ni­ca­tions

You can’t help but laugh at Monster.com’s When I Grow Up. Though tar­get­ed at peo­ple who are focused on achieve­ment, most any­one can relate to the 30-sec­ond spot.

Who hasn’t aspired to become some­thing “great”? It’s not until we get old­er that we’re jad­ed by career prospects.

But not for the Monster.com kids; they tell like it is, “When I grow up. I want to file all day…Claw my way up to mid­dle man­age­ment,” or “be replaced on a whim” — just a few of the “aspi­ra­tions” spo­ken with sin­cer­i­ty by the kids, with the Amer­i­can Boy­choir play­ing in the back­ground.

We can’t help but chuck­le at the sar­casm and real­ize we can aspire to be so much more.

---

Mark Alves, Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Con­sul­tant

My favorite Super Bowl spot of all time? Monster.com’s “When I Grow Up…” com­mer­cial from the 1999 Super Bowl. This was the dead­pan mon­tage of kids explain­ing how they want to grow up to be mere cogs in the work machine.

The ad was fun­ny, mem­o­rable, com­plete­ly on-mes­sage, cap­tured the atten­tion of every­one at the Super Bowl par­ty I attend­ed and, most impor­tant­ly, it worked. This spot put Mon­ster on the map for job sites as traf­fic sky­rock­et­ed.

---

Tide’s Miracle Stain (2013)

Jon Bai­ley, Chief Rela­tion­ships Offi­cer at the i.d.e.a. Brand

Bril­liant work by Saatchi & Saatchi three years ago.

What I love about this spot, aside from the incred­i­ble enter­tain­ment val­ue, is the strat­e­gy and plan­ning that went into pulling it off. The team at Saatchi had to plan for sev­er­al poten­tial out­comes to the play­off games, and line up the star play­ers asso­ci­at­ed with those teams that might ulti­mate­ly make it to the Super Bowl in advance. They did­n’t know this infor­ma­tion in order to shoot the spot until a cou­ple of weeks before the big game and were able to pull the trig­ger with the right tal­ent in place – what a feat of pro­duc­tion in a very short amount of time.

Even bet­ter, the spot aired in the third quar­ter direct­ly after the Ravens scored. And to top it off, the Ravens won! Bril­liant oppor­tu­ni­ty played bril­liant­ly. Tide wins the Ad Super Bowl, fol­lowed by awards at Cannes, Clios and more.

---

Vas­silis Dalakas, Pro­fes­sor of Mar­ket­ing at Cal State San Mar­cos

It was great because:

1. It specif­i­cal­ly incor­po­rat­ed the two teams play­ing in the Super Bowl, mak­ing it eas­i­er to pay atten­tion to it and remem­ber it.

2. It clev­er­ly and cre­ative­ly lever­aged Tide’s NFL spon­sor­ship, which allows them to use NFL trade­marks. These trade­marks were essen­tial for the sto­ry­line to come to life.

3. It was fun­ny but not just for the sake of being fun­ny; the humor relat­ed to the brand and helped the brand mes­sage (no stain is sacred) and ben­e­fit (Tide can remove all stains) get com­mu­ni­cat­ed.

---

EDS’ Herding Cats (2000)

James Fox, CEO of Red Peak Brand­ing

Cat Herders ran in Jan­u­ary 2000, dur­ing Super Bowl XXXIV, a game often referred to as the Dot-Com Super Bowl, due to the large num­ber of dot-com com­pa­nies who adver­tised dur­ing the Big Game. It fea­tures griz­zled cow­boys herd­ing (new­ly) dig­i­tal ani­mat­ed cats. It’s a giant West­ern metaphor to describe an incred­i­bly bor­ing IT ser­vices com­pa­ny.

It’s all in the details though: from the cow­boy using his lint roller on his jack­et to the sub­lime ratio­nale line, “In a sense this is what we do.” It’s the best of what ad agency Fal­lon was pro­duc­ing — fun­ny, poignant and out­smart­ing the com­pe­ti­tion.

The spot was a huge suc­cess both cre­ative­ly and com­mer­cial­ly. Then-Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton cit­ed Cat Herders as his favorite Big Game com­mer­cial and EDS exec­u­tives praised the com­mer­cial for meet­ing busi­ness objec­tives.

Vis­its to eds.com quadru­pled to near­ly 2 mil­lion the Mon­day after the game and reached near­ly 7 mil­lion in the week after the event, per a news release. The com­pa­ny esti­mat­ed that for every dol­lar spent on Super Bowl adver­tis­ing, it gar­nered a $5 to $7 return in media val­ue.

---

Dodge’s Farmer (2013)

Erin Ever­hart, Lead Man­ag­er of Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing – SEO at The Home Depot

I was a huge fan of the God Made A Farmer spot. It was such a com­pelling sto­ry that real­ly stuck out through oth­er over­ly sales pitch­es.

---

Kathy Delaney, Glob­al Chief Cre­ative Offi­cer of Saatchi & Saatchi Well­ness

One of my recent favorites is Ram Truck’s God Made a Farmer. It’s such a sim­ple, under­stat­ed ad, but, at the same time, so arrest­ing and beau­ti­ful. It was able to cut through the noise on what might be the loud­est night of the year by just being qui­et and focus­ing on mak­ing an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion.

---

Snickers’ You’re Not You with Betty White (2010)

Simon Hes­el­tine, Inde­pen­dent Con­sul­tant

Back in 2010 I was work­ing on a sports site — Fanhouse.com — at AOL. Fan­house held the #1 spot in the SERPs for “Super Bowl ads” and “Super Bowl com­mer­cials” and #2 for “Super­bowl ads” and “Super­bowl com­mer­cials.” Which meant that the Mon­day after the Super Bowl was a huge traf­fic day for us.

That said, we also want­ed to com­pete on each indi­vid­ual ad (this was before the ads were placed on YouTube before the game, as they are now). So we had a team of peo­ple, watch­ing the com­mer­cials, try­ing to deter­mine what the right key­words were for each ad…what should go in the title of the post along with the video of the ad.

One that sticks out is the Snick­ers com­mer­cial that was released that year, the one that launched the “You’re not you when you’re hun­gry” tagline. The next day I looked at our com­peti­tors to see what they’d gone with. Some went with “Snick­ers com­mer­cial,” one even went with “Abe Vigo­da com­mer­cial,” but we had the #1 rank­ing and a bunch of traf­fic for the right term — “Bet­ty White Snick­ers com­mer­cial.”

---

John Gal­le­gos, Founder and CEO of Grupo Gal­le­gos

It had the right amount of what makes a great Super Bowl ad: sin­gle-mind­ed mes­sage, a celebri­ty, humor and a sur­prise twist. The prod­uct was the hero and it led to oth­er work for the brand.

Doritos’ Ultrasound (2016)

Matt McGowan, Head of Strat­e­gy at Google
Hilar­i­ous.

Have you seen it? The child­birth one…Timely for me, too.

---

Doritos’ Live the Flavor (2007)

Aaron Levy, Man­ag­er of Client Strat­e­gy at Elite SEM

Favorite of mine is def­i­nite­ly Dori­tos “Live The Fla­vor” from 2007 — it was the first (and prob­a­bly best) con­sumer-gen­er­at­ed ad to air ever.

As an aspir­ing mar­ket­ing stu­dent at the time, it gave me a ton of hope for the “lit­tle guy” in all of us.

---

Pepsi’s Just One Look (1991)

Tobey Van Santvo­ord, Region­al Vice Pres­i­dent — West Coast at Dstillery
Per­haps Pep­si’s most icon­ic Super Bowl ad of all time, this spot used one of the most rec­og­niz­able super­mod­els in the world, Cindy Craw­ford, to pro­mote their new­ly redesigned soda can.

As a mid­dle school boy myself, see­ing a super­mod­el in a tank top and daisy dukes step out of a red Lam­borgh­i­ni was enough to switch me from Coke to Pep­si.

Most mem­o­rably, how­ev­er, was the impact on the brand’s new design. While this com­mer­cial lever­aged sex appeal, it was able to intro­duce a new can design that became arguably the most icon­ic Pep­si can design of all time.

---

Pepsi’s Cheatin’ Heart (1996)

Dana DiT­o­ma­so, Part­ner at Kick Point

I’ve got to say that I real­ly love this spot from 1996.

It’s just so sweet and fun­ny and does­n’t have to say much.

---

Microsoft’s Braylon (2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLXRt-qRBfU

Mel Car­son, Founder, CEO and Prin­ci­pal Strate­gist at Delight­ful Com­mu­ni­ca­tions

My favorite (bear in mind I’ve only lived here for 3 Super Bowls) is Microsoft’s Bray­lon spot – I love how this is less about a prod­uct but more about a move­ment to empow­er and help peo­ple over­come adver­si­ty and do amaz­ing things. It was a great stage for Microsoft to show the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy and keep the wheels turn­ing on its resur­gence.

---

Chrysler’s Imported From Detroit (2011)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKL254Y_jtc

Car­olyn Had­lock, Prin­ci­pal and Exec­u­tive Cre­ative Direc­tor at Young & Laramore

Besides 1984, of course, the ad that made me want to go into adver­tis­ing, the ad that gave me that same stop-me-in-my-tracks moment was the first Import­ed from Detroit spot by Chrysler in 2011. Every­thing about it — the grit­ty film, the writ­ing, the spare use of Eminem, the sleek­ness of the car and the final punc­tu­a­tion of the tagline at the end — was Super Bowl wor­thy.

Plus, I adored the fact that they didn’t hype it before the game. They had enough con­fi­dence in it to know it only had to play one time and peo­ple would remem­ber it as one of the great­est Super Bowl ads of all time.

---

Reebok’s Terry Tate: Office Linebacker (2003)

Nicholas Papa­gian­nis, Vice Pres­i­dent and Search Direc­tor at Cramer-Kras­selt

Reebok’s Ter­ry Tate ads are some­thing my friends and I still talk about. At the time, I remem­ber laugh­ing, but it was also sort of shock­ing.

The quotes from the ads are clas­sic — “When it’s game time, it’s pain time” — and it drove a lot of peo­ple to Reebok’s site to down­load it.

---

Emerald Nuts’ They’re Kind Of Hard To Share (2004)

Derek Glea­son, SEO Ana­lyst at Work­shop Dig­i­tal Not many com­mer­cials are ambi­tious enough to try to unite uni­corns, San­ta Claus and the East­er Bun­ny, but the absur­dist com­e­dy makes this Emer­ald Nuts spot fun­ny and mem­o­rable. (After all, these are the same folks that brought us Ego­ma­ni­a­cal Nor­mans and a bevy of oth­er “E‑N” non sequiturs dur­ing pre­vi­ous ad cam­paigns.)

---

Wendy’s Where’s The Beef? (1984)

Ken Har­lan, CEO of MobileFuse

This spot real­ly put Wendy’s on the map and helped dif­fer­en­ti­ate the brand from com­peti­tors such as McDon­ald’s and Burg­er King.

Anoth­er mem­o­rable moment was the Super Bowl in 2014 — that’s because it was the first time that we start­ed to real­ly see mobile buys accom­pa­ny TV buys to fur­ther ampli­fy the spots, and pro­vide addi­tion­al con­text and engage­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. Super Bowl com­mer­cials pro­vide the best oppor­tu­ni­ty for exposure/branding in all of adver­tis­ing, but they lack the abil­i­ty to accom­plish any low­er fun­nel activ­i­ties. We’re see­ing more and more brands think about adding mobile into their Super Bowl mar­ket­ing plans to make their bud­get go fur­ther, and I think this sig­ni­fies a major shift in how we think about Super Bowl adver­tis­ing.

---

Did your favorite Super Bowl ad make the list?