{"id":145928,"date":"2023-02-05T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=913269"},"modified":"2023-02-05T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-05T00:00:00","slug":"column-the-hyping-of-super-bowl-commercials-upstages-the-hyping-of-the-game-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2023\/02\/05\/column-the-hyping-of-super-bowl-commercials-upstages-the-hyping-of-the-game-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: The hyping of Super Bowl commercials upstages the hyping of the game itself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

The rush for the title of best Super Bowl commercial already has begun, and early signs point to a banner year for banality, middle-aged TV celebrities and, of course, animals doing wacky things.
\nForget Patrick Mahomes versus Jalen Hurts.
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\nAccording to Vulture.com, a website I always turn to for the latest pop culture news until I\u2019ve reached my limit of free articles, informs us that on Super Bowl Sunday, \u201cthe game is the pee break.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s a shame considering the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles is about as good as it gets, football-wise. It\u2019s the proverbial game that needs no hype.
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\nBut that\u2019s irrelevant to many of the 200 million or so people expected to tune in Feb. 12, so the hyping of the commercials has become more important than who wins the game.
\nAccording to reliable experts who easily can be Googled, the obsession with commercials began in 1984 when Apple introduced its Macintosh computer with a Super Bowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott that alluded to George Orwell\u2019s dystopian novel \u201c1984.\u201d
\nThis is a still from video of Apple Computer's famous \"1984\" commercial which introduced the Macintosh personal computer. (Associated Press)
\nThe tagline, dramatically displayed after a woman athlete hurls a sledgehammer into a video screen of Big Brother, read: \u201cOn Jan. 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh, and you\u2019ll see why 1984 won\u2019t be like \u20181984.\u2019 \u201d
\nIt was an instant classic, unlike Super Bowl XVIII, in which the Los Angeles Raiders trounced the Washington Redskins in a snoozefest.
\nThirty-nine years later, we\u2019re actually living in a world that somewhat resembles \u201c1984,\u201d with a Chinese spy balloon flying over Montana and a megalomaniac controlling who is allowed to have their thoughts displayed on Twitter. An updated Apple Super Bowl commercial with someone tossing a hammer at a big screen featuring Elon Musk might be warranted.
\nNaturally, many of the new commercials will go viral before the game next week thanks to Twitter, TikTok and YouTube, and several already have been teased ad nauseam.
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\nAlicia Silverstone returns in her role as Cher from \u201cClueless\u201d for a Rakuten ad, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl shills for Crown Royal, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul bring back their iconic \u201cBreaking Bad\u201d characters for PopCorners, Tony Romo does a bad Bill Murray impression as Carl the \u201cCaddyshack\u201d groundskeeper in a Michelob Ultra spot, Ozzy Osbourne stars in an office setting for Workday and so on and on and on.
\nAt this point, celebrities who refrain from doing Super Bowl ads are in the minority. No one ever has enough money.
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\nSome of us are old enough to remember the good old days of Super Bowl IV, when the Chiefs played the Minnesota Vikings in 1970 and you didn\u2019t see the commercials until they were shown during the actual game. Imagine that. Now an entire generation has grown up with the understanding that the Super Bowl ad needs to be teased or shown entirely on the internet and social media before the telecast to create the proper buzz.
\nRanking the commercials also is a standard part of Super Bowl watching, popularized by USA Today a few decades ago and featured in many newspapers, websites and morning talk shows. When my former colleague Steve Johnson left the Chicago Tribune and stopped ranking the best and worst of the Super Bowl commercials, he left a void that could not be filled.
\nMuch of the discussion on Super Bowl commercials this week will mention last year\u2019s epic bomb, the Larry David-featured spot for FTX in which the comedian famous for being negative reacted to historic inventions with the catchphrase \u201cI don\u2019t think so.\u201d It ended with the introduction of the cryptocurrency company and David repeating the line and adding: \u201cAnd I\u2019m never wrong about this stuff.\u201d
\n[ [Don't miss] As GM Ryan Poles tries to reawaken the Chicago Bears, the Kansas City Chiefs offer a model to emulate ]
\nThe viewer was told to not \u201cbe like Larry,\u201d or in other words to invest in FTX, a $23 billion company that later would declare bankruptcy and see its founder arrested on fraud charges. Those who thought the ad was funny enough to invest their money in the cryptocurrency company learned the hard way never to trust a Super Bowl commercial that doesn\u2019t feature puppies.
\nSuffice to say, the FTX ad won\u2019t wind up in \u201cSuper Bowl Greatest Commercials: Battle of the Decades,\u201d which airs Wednesday on CBS and is co-hosted by former NFL star Boomer Esiason. The annual compilation of Super Bowl ads is in its 22nd year, even though it\u2019s just, well, commercials. Somehow people keep coming back for more, perhaps knowing they can vote like it\u2019s a reality show and not an hourlong advertisement.
\nRob Gronkowski arrives for the NFL Honors show on Feb. 10, 2022, in Inglewood, Calif. (Marcio Jose Sanchez\/AP)
\nAccording to Deadline, this year\u2019s special will feature an \u201cexclusive\u201d interview with retired tight end Rob Gronkowski, who will be featured in a live Super Bowl commercial for FanDuel in which he attempts to kick a field goal.
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\nGronkowski replaced Baker Mayfield this year as the most overexposed athlete on TV commercials, and if you\u2019ve watched any playoff games over the last month, you\u2019ve seen the run-up ads that tease Gronkowski\u2019s upcoming kick dozens of times.
\nThey\u2019re almost as annoying as the \u201cWhat\u2019s up, Einstein?\u201d ads for a wireless provider. The only way this commercial could end well for some of us is if Gronk were to double-doink his kick off Einstein\u2019s head and knock him out on live TV.
\nEither way, we\u2019ll all be watching, at least when we\u2019re not taking a pee break during the action.<\/p>\n

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rush for the title of best Super Bowl commercial already has begun, and early signs point to a banner year for banality, middle-aged TV celebrities and, of course, animals doing wacky things.
\nForget Patrick Mahomes versus Jalen Hurts.
\nAdvertisemen…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[413,126,639,1527,137,4,194,222,465,1542,900,1242],"tags":[2210,5567,7705,10309,3009,3472,1804,10333,8395,3929,6823,8852,10315,8399,10310],"class_list":["post-145928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-apple","category-california","category-currency","category-fraud","category-internet","category-news-chinese-law","category-online-video","category-social-media","category-technology","category-tv","category-twitter","tag-america","tag-bitcoin","tag-blockchain","tag-bytedance","tag-chicago","tag-chinese","tag-computer","tag-crypto","tag-elon-musk","tag-espionage","tag-fintech","tag-football","tag-media-intelligence","tag-spy","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145928"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145931,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145928\/revisions\/145931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}