Jon Evans, CMO with System1, joins Cheddar News to discuss how this year's super bowl ads fared with audiences.

Between Bells

Rating the Top Super Bowl LVI Ads

welcome back everyone to between bells and Cheddar news Super Bowl 56 1 for the books for sure. As the rams beat the Bengals, but while many tuned in just for the game, a lot of us just watch the commercials from celebrity cameos to crypto exchanges this year's selection of ads didn't disappoint. So joining us now to break down what worked and what didn't is john Evans chief marketing officer for system one, john great to have you back here on cheddar news. So based on System one's test your ad platform. I'm curious which adds one last night. Well listen, firstly what an amazing game. I mean I was on the edge of my seat and that final two minutes was was incredible and actually the competition for top spot for ads was similarly tight. So we had to separate, we had to kind of go to a jury to separate the top two. It was a victory for animals because the number one, actually the number one, it was boston beer sam Adams spot which came in at the top with of course a sort of a robotic party, which is absolutely fantastic. And number two, they were just picked at the post by sam Adams but Doritos with, with of course all the animals in the, in the, in the forest as well came second. So definitely an animal theme in the top spots this year. I love it and that Doritos ad so funny, I loved it, but which adds, I'm curious then flopped. It must have been any other ones that don't have an animal in it like this Doritos ad. I know that was the tip for this year, right? And you know, put a smile on people's face, entertain and and animals definitely have a place in their hearts. Listen down at the bottom. I'm sad to say crypto didn't do that well. I know I'm going to disappoint a lot of people by saying that, but gambling crypto were very much one star on our five star system at the bottom and just didn't really resonate with people emotionally. I'm sure a lot of people like them but didn't capture the nation quite in the way that Doritos and Sam Adams did at the top of the leaderboard, that's interesting because crypto sort of the new entrance to the ad wars this year at the Super Bowl. Why didn't they resonate well with people? I think, I think what they tried to do was they tried to do a stunt, right? They tried to kind of engage, you know, sort of do non traditional advertising and that, you know, that works in terms of driving people to websites and getting people to do things as we're seeing here on the screen. So it's very clever. But what it didn't do was actually connect emotionally with people and what we know is that when people are feel strongly about an ad, they're more likely to remember who it was. So despite all the noise around this. I'm not gonna remember coin based necessarily in in six months or 12 months time and that perhaps although it worked as a stunt on the nights make people kind of interact with them. It's not going to make me remember them in the future. And I think that's that's the trick that they missed compared to sam Adams that made me laugh, made me remember the beer straight away. They did that exception. That's so interesting. You say that about the coin base because like I thought oh my God they spent $7 million for this bouncing QR code. They had over 20 million people go to their website. I mean if anything because it's so out of the box and so different. I almost thought that that was a genius ad almost in a sense it was and it was very clever and ready did it last year if you remember where they just had the five second ad with texting and people went to search and what's going on here. So look, stunts can definitely work in terms of driving short term sales and and and so they scored very well on short term action. But in terms of building a brand that people remember over time you kind of have to do something different and that's where you know, you need to appeal to people's emotion and also make make yourself memorable and that's the key thing is being remembered is almost the most important thing in advertising and that's where some of the ones at the top like here, for example, another brand that got it right. They used technology of course, but they did it with the cute dog, if you remember the kind of robo dog and a lovely story and, and, and and that that connected with you as much more strongly and people remember kira as a result and when they're thinking about buying electric vehicle care will come to mind in the future. So that's kind of how that that work differently. The other theme we saw a lot last night was really nostalgia. You had, you know, the doctor Evil making his triumphant return. You had a laser with Seth Rogan and Paul as well. Do you think those nostalgia ads play well with audiences? They do every time. And it's very clever because if you think about, you know, the, the laser for example with Seth Rogan, you know, that they're building on years and years of association that we all have with the films with the actors and it's a very clever actually, Budweiser do it as well with the Clydesdale dogs. So it's a really good trick and actually it's something that most brands compare attention to because if you use, you know, familiar things that we all know and then it just increases the chance that people will be, you know, a liking and being remembered and it came in the music as well actually because the number of eighties and nineties kind of soundtracks as well that we're using a lot of the a lot of the ads again evoke a lot of nostalgia and a lot of familiar feelings. And you know what we've gotta remember is the Super Bowl is a family show. It's designed to appeal to everyone. You know, the halftime show is a great example of that as well of course with, you know, the kind of, you know, West Coast rappers and and that's the thing is is nostalgia are really, really powerful and in fact, you're seeing now with the trade, this is another great example kind of using using babies in your ad is another way to kind of tug at the heartstrings and get people to pay attention. John I have about a minute left with you. One other thing I thought was interesting is ad execs were telling us there was gonna be a lot more humor in ads this year than in years past, which is interesting because we didn't hear the pandemic once in any of these ads whatsoever. It was that, was there a reason for that? Yeah, very definitely. So we've done a lot of research over the last two years to see what impact the pandemic has had on people's response to advertising. And look, it really is. We're actually all sick and tired of it. You know, we've we've had all the government advice, we've lived with restrictions over the past 18 months to two years. And what we find in advertising is that if anybody mentions the C. Word at all, it puts viewers off, we just don't want to be reminded about wearing masks and distancing from friends and so on. So it's not a good idea to even if you're doing it for positive reasons to kind of mention covid. But what we do find actually is that humor as a device in advertising has kind of been declining over many years. But it's actually one of the most effective ways of making your brand liked and remembered. So I was really pleased to see humor kind of making something of a comeback this year. And if you look at the top the top three ads this year, you know, boston beer, you know, Doritos and care. They all use humor very very well. So it's definitely a top tip, you know, such a good point because the last couple of years from the pandemic was all about uplifting commercials and I think a lot of us were sort of missing the humor that we got last night, which by the way is still a great Super Bowl. Great ads, john Evans chief marketing officer for System One. Thanks so much, john for always joining us