The 16 best Super Bowl 2023 commercials
Alicia Silverstone is still Clueless, Walt and Jesse are still cooking, and Adam Driver will only work with himself
TV Features Super Bowl
The Super Bowl of advertising, also known as, well, the actual Super Bowl, brought out the celebs in a big way this year. Ben Affleck, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Bryan Cranston, Will Ferrell, John Hamm, Elton John, Maya Rudolph, Amy Schumer, Alicia Silverstone, Sylvester Stallone, Ben Stiller, Miles Teller, Steve Martin, and Serena Williams were among the stars doing their part to sell you stuff through the multimillion-dollar spots that aired during Super Bowl LVII.
One thing we didn’t see anyone endorsing this year? Crypto. The cryptocurrency promo blitz peaked during last year’s game, and those companies then spent the rest of the year imploding. Guess no one is eager to open themselves up to litigation over their role as spokesperson for an industry in freefall.
That absence left room for a few new sponsors to get their messages out, but mostly we saw familiar brand names in the realms of food, beverages, cars, and, of course, entertainment (don’t miss our piece on all the new movie trailers that premiered during the game). Here are some of the commercials we thought did their job especially well this year.
37 Comments
Once upon a time there were only 11 movies on video tape (not counting porn: thouands and thousands of those). Therefore I have seen Caddy Shack at least 60 times. Brian Cox is no Ted Knight. And Serena, you’re the GOAT, what are you doing bad commercials for, huh?
I really don’t get the lack of shame. What is the motivation? I’ve made millions upon millions of dollars in my career, but what I really need to do now is make a terrible commercial.
I don’t care how much money you have, when your agent calls and offers you a job that pays millions for only a few hours work, that’s gotta be incredibly hard to turn down.
I don’t know. I don’t have millions. But I know when I have thousands I become more picky in what I’ll do to make other thousands.
I’ve been getting a very short version of the Williams/Cox playing golf ad for a few weeks on YT and guessed it was meant as a super bowl spot. Now that the game is done, I hope so too are these ads.
the only non-terrible commercials in all of this were the M&M, Pop Corners and Poker Face ones.also, the T-Mobile ad with Bradley Cooper was nice but T-Mobile squandered all the good will by their later commercial with Braff & Travolta
My T-Mobile opinion is the reverse. The Bradley Cooper ad was godawful, but the fun Scrubs-does-Grease ad was a delight.
The Breaking Bad one was awful. Funny is not taking actors and having them repeat old lines but with a product name cut-and-pasted into it. Funny is doing something clever.
“Say. Its. Name.”? Painful.And “Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul aren’t getting any younger, so we can’t blame them for milking these characters for all their worth while they still can.”What the hey? Both of them are incredible actors with decades of life left in them who should be “milking” really great next roles, not cringey ads like this.
Yeah, lol. Aaron Paul is 43, not 63.
It’s astonishing that they’re allowing their final appearances as those characters to be that fucking commercial instead of Better Call Saul.
Especially when you are doing mostly shot for shot remakes of those lines. They could have literally just paid them both likeness rights and used a computer and old footage to make this ad.
totally, if they had just deepfaked the ad it would have been less humiliating
Never mind that Jesse Pinkman’s salty snack of choice was Funyuns. Now a commercial for THAT would have been hilarious!
Adam Driver should play a copy of Neo in another unnecessary but shockingly fun Matrix sequel.Or a copy of Smith but I think he’d be a good Neo, especially alongside Keanu Reeves
Search for “breaking bad parody” on YouTube. Any random result will be more amusing and most likely more clever than that ad.
All I could think of watching the Affleck/Dunkin spot was “Letterman did it first and better with Taco Bell.”
Man, this is all lame.
I think we lost something as a society when we decided to give up on the concept of selling out. Just because they’re not shilling for crypto doesn’t mean these a-listers aren’t trading on the respect they’ve earned as artists to dupe you into buying something you probably didn’t previously want or need. I’m not saying they should take themselves seriously all the time. But if you want to do a comedy bit, go on SNL or something. Don’t try to convince me you love Pepsi Zero or whatever.
Counterpoint, everyone sells out eventually. Just need to realize none of these people actually care about any of this shit. Except maybe Affleck’s love for Dunkin.
It’s all relative. We recently saw that the price of Beyonce’s dignity is $25 million. Easy money is hard to pass up.
See your thing is that you think none of these celebrities in the past ever sold out, when in fact they did it all the time. Except they used to do it in Japan and other foreign countries.
I’m less concerned about selling out than the class of celebs they’re tapping for these ads. I guess the Super Bowl age probably skews older, but does anyone under the age of 25 recognize Sylvester Stallone? Or know what Caddyshack is? The Workday ad featured a lineup of wax figures that haven’t been relevant in decades. Who is that for?
I don’t think they were the target audience for those ads anyway.
HR and IT managers that make HRIS purchasing decisions. So, not a 23 year-old.
so many seem to boil down to “hey gen/x remember them?”
Random thoughts from an internet rando:1. I liked the Affleck ad. Everyone seemed to treat it with the appropriate level of seriousness (not much) and I thought it worked.2. Something looked off about Elisa Donovan in the Clueless ad. De-aged or a ton of makeup or something, but something was weird.3. The Squarespace ad *seemed* like they wanted Keanu Reeves, couldn’t get him, and pivoted to Adam Driver. I didn’t think it was that great. Adam Driver in 65 though… will be seeing that one.4. Setting aside the fact that BB ended a decade ago for a second, that is just a *weird* property to want to associate your product with. POP Corners wants to remind me of one man’s descent towards death while selfishly dragging down all those around him in pursuit of producing meth and ultimately getting involved with horrible people every time I reach for a bag, I guess.5. The Pepsi Max ads were the most typical SB ads of the past several years. Big stars, nothing especially clever and probably cost a ton of money to produce. I imagine that Pepsi Max sales will neither go up or down as a result.6. Hated the Caddyshack ads. Replacing the characters with other actors didn’t work (esp Romo), the movie itself is about 40 years old now (and this article mentioned BB being 10 years old, so…) so it is not relevant. I would have preferred if they just had Bushwood and did something that was not supposed to be an obvious callback to the original characters.7. The Netflix/EV ad was fine, but I am at the point where I am over Will Ferrell. He peaked a long time ago and coming into his stride when frat humor was still a popular (and viable) thing was huge for him.
In all fairness to Squarespace, Adam Driver is what you end up with when you try to draw Keanu Reeves from memory.
Squarespace’s Super Bowl ad did feature Keanu a few years back, in 2018! Source: I worked on that ad.
2. i don’t know about cgi but dressing a 50yo woman like a trendy teen is never a good look
I thought these 2 were the best:
the flag football ad
and the people-abducted-by-rabbits ad
Was that the “Nevermind” janitor in the Tubi commercial? If so, why?
I’m shaking my head at the mother in the flag football NFL ad. She went for the flags too soon. You gotta bring the daughter into the hug completely THEN reach for the flag.
Most of these ads depended on nothing else but empty nostalgia, no actual humor or any appeal outside of throwing around old catch phrases. I’d say the appeal of watching Super Bowl ads because you might see something different or innovative peaked in the late 80s. Get off my lawn.
HOW is the Blue Moon commercial not in here?!
Honestly I did not recognize Miles Teller because for some reason, his face didn’t make me want to punch it. The Workday ad got on my nerves me because my company uses workday for HR stuff and it sucks assDisappointed in M&M. I figured the whole getting Maya thing was gonna be a big meta joke making fun of the idiots made about the M&M mascots not being fuckable but instead it just seems like they really did change their ad campaign to appease those idiotsAffleck doing a Dunkin ad was cuteThe Busch ad with Sarah McLachlan made me laughI guarantee PopCorners taste like shit and if you actually look at the bag you will find that, at best, they are slightly better for you then Doritos.
Curious why the insipid comment that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul aren’t getting any younger and you “can’t blame them” for “milking” the characters. Given that the list is pretty much celebs doing the same thing, characters or themselves. Gracious of you to give these guys a pass. Or just stupid rambling? Yeah, I’m going with the stupid rambling. A Breaking Bad callback when Cranston is 83 would be fabulous. It was a standout show with a flawless cast, ingrained in American culture. It’s just so 2023 internet whining to say you enjoyed something but – but nothing. Maybe just shut up and smile at something clever without tossing out a dig about aging. Jesus.
The best commercial was the Ram EV one that was a parody of erectile dysfunction commercials.
I gasped for joy when I saw the maple leaf above the Crown Royale logo, bc I thought it meant they were bringing back the maple-flavor. So disappointed I just got a dumb trivia factoid instead.