Last year, some of the best Super Bowl ads of 2015 put new plays in the marketer’s play­book. This year, it appears that many of those plays need to be total­ly rewrit­ten.

3 Myths About Viral Super Bowl Ads

Myth 1: Animals, Babies, Or Dancing Make Videos Go Viral

Up until this year, danc­ing and ani­mals did­n’t appear to work any bet­ter than oth­er cre­ative devices at gain­ing high­er rates of shar­ing. Babies did out­per­form most oth­er cre­ative devices, but only when the video evoked intense emo­tions. Of all pos­si­ble cre­ative devices, videos that dis­played per­son­al tri­umph appeared most like­ly to deliv­er shar­ing suc­cess.

Myth 2: Hilarious Videos Are Shared More Often

Humor is sub­jec­tive. Brands need to be extreme­ly fun­ny to impress con­sumers worn down by a glut of ads that try to be fun­ny (and usu­al­ly are not). In fact, the “Bud­weis­er Clydesdale’s “Broth­er­hood” Com­mer­cial” and the Ram Trucks “Farmer” Com­mer­cial, the two ads from Super Bowl 2013 that attract­ed the most shares on Face­book, Twit­ter, and the blo­gos­phere, evoked a dif­fer­ent set of emo­tion­al trig­gers from the rest.

Myth 3: Celebrity Endorsements Increase Sharing Potential

Few view­ers cite celebri­ties as a key dri­ver of why they would share an ad. None of the top 3 ads from Super Bowl 2014 fea­tured celebri­ties. This is not just restrict­ed to the Big Game. Up until August 2015, only 13 per­cent of the top 100 most shared ads of all time in Unruly’s Viral Video Chart fea­tured stars.

So, What Happened During Super Bowl 50?

Nat­u­ral­ly, we saw tons of Big Game ads that fea­tured ani­mals, babies, or danc­ing; a pletho­ra of Super Bowl ads that were – or tried to be – fun­ny; and more celebri­ties than you could shake a stick at. So, I inter­viewed Devra Pry­wes, Unruly’s VP of Mar­ket­ing and Insights in the U.S., to see what brands can learn about mak­ing the most of their Super Bowl moments.

Greg Jarboe:

You’ve been fol­low­ing social video ads dur­ing the Big Game for sev­er­al years. What was the biggest sur­prise for you in this year’s list the most shared ad of Super Bowl 2016?

Devra Prywes:

I had high hopes for the ads this year after the shar­ing records from the 2015 Big Game. We saw a win­ning year last year because adver­tis­ers hit hard on the emo­tion­al inten­si­ty of their spots, span­ning a gamut of emo­tions from hap­pi­ness and hilar­i­ty to pride and nos­tal­gia. This year the ads seemed “light” — they were, for the most part, light-heart­ed and light on emo­tion­al inten­si­ty. This is the sec­ond year the Face­book video for­mat has been avail­able for the Big Game and I was shocked to see that adver­tis­ers didn’t uni­ver­sal­ly use both for­mats, espe­cial­ly as the Face­book for­mat trends much more quick­ly than YouTube’s. This year Face­book video often had 4–5 times more shares, and some were 50x high­er! I also was pleas­ant­ly pleased to seem T‑Mobile hop­ping on memes in a real­ly authen­tic way. I loved see­ing Steve Har­vey and Drake par­o­dy their cur­rent memes (Harvey’s recent Miss Amer­i­ca mis­step and Drake’s hit song). T‑Mobile had 3 ads (includ­ing the 0:30 and extend­ed ver­sion of “Restrict­ed Bling”) in the top 10 most shared ad of Super Bowl 50.

GJ:

Dori­tos announced some time ago that this was the last year for its “Crash the Super Bowl” con­test. But, this year, “Ultra­sound” topped Unruly’s chart. Should Dori­tos recon­sid­er retir­ing “Crash the Super Bowl” or go out a win­ner?

DP:

That’s a deci­sion for Dori­tos to make — they can def­i­nite­ly repli­cate this suc­cess with­out crowd­sourc­ing the con­tent. They topped the leader­board this year because they hit the holy grail for video shar­ing – they made a strong emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with view­ers, trig­gered many social moti­va­tions (or rea­sons peo­ple share videos), and launched their ad in advance of the Big Game. The Crash the Super Bowl pro­gram helps to spread the word as the cre­ative teams help to spread the word for their con­tent, but this word can eas­i­ly be spread with paid dis­tri­b­u­tion.

GJ:

Dori­tos and Poké­mon released their ads well before Super Bowl Sun­day, but many of the most shared ads came as a “sur­prise” dur­ing the Big Game. Is this the new new best prac­tice? DP: No. Wait­ing to sur­prise view­ers is a dan­ger­ous strat­e­gy. We see adver­tis­ers get burned by this year over year. T‑Mobile’s Steve Har­vey and Ver­i­zon meme made it into the top 10 because it was an authen­tic use of a hot meme (and all-around awe­some!). T‑Mobile cap­tured mul­ti­ple trends per­fect­ly in a “mic-drop” moment. The top shared ad, by far, is Dori­tos’ “Ultra­sound” which was an ear­ly launch­er! And, the major­i­ty of “sur­prise” adver­tis­ers are in the bot­tom por­tion of our ad track­er.

GJ:

We saw a lot of ani­mals and kids in this year’s Super Bowl ads, includ­ing a Pup­py­Mon­key­Ba­by. Is this the new new best prac­tice?

DP:

For every ani­mal and baby video that trends, there are hun­dreds that nev­er see the light of day. Moun­tain Dew seems to have tak­en what peo­ple con­sid­er to be viral gold and cre­at­ed a (very creepy) mashup. The impor­tant take­away for pup­pies, mon­keys, babies and oth­er cute beings is that it isn’t enough to have a baby or an ani­mal in your video – it’s how that baby or ani­mal makes you feel. If you have a strong emo­tion­al reac­tion, the con­tent is high­ly like­ly to trend.

GJ:

We also saw a lot of celebri­ties in this year’s Super Bowl ads, includ­ing Helen Mir­ren. Is this the new new best prac­tice?

DP:

Celebri­ties are not a best prac­tice for video shar­ing. Now brands may have many rea­sons for hir­ing celebri­ties for their ads, includ­ing hop­ing for a halo effect for the celebrity’s per­son­al brand to rub off onto them. There were many celebri­ty ads this year, and video shar­ing was down more than a third com­pared to last year’s game. While Helen Mir­ren was spec­tac­u­lar in Budweiser’s PSA, the gag­gle of celebri­ties did not help this year’s Big Game to go viral. Celebri­ties will def­i­nite­ly dri­ve up the already high Super Bowl media bud­get – and should come with a cau­tion label. They can ampli­fy shar­ing in a strong ad but can­not sal­vage a weak ad. Celebri­ties can also be polar­iz­ing (think Kim Kar­dashi­an in T‑Mobile’s 2015 Big Game spot which had a share rate of less than 1 per­cent) and dis­tract­ing (like Bob Dylan and Liam Nee­son dis­tract­ing view­ers in the 2014 and 2015 Big Game spots for Chrysler and Clash of Clans respec­tive­ly, deliv­er­ing some of the low­est brand recall scores among Super Bowl ads).