Huh. Where’d all the cryptocurrency go?
That’s my takeaway from the 2023 Super Bowl commercials, which were different from last year and had a tough opponent they couldn’t do much about. The game itself was just too interesting. A boring Super Bowl automatically hands off viewer interest to the commercials, but with a really good game at stake, the ads have to do more than throw some celebrities and titans of nostalgia (”Grease”; “Caddyshack”) against the walls of our minds to see what sticks.
Here are some highs and lows along the advertising quality spectrum, with this proviso: I’m writing from the perspective of someone who will be the last person in America to “scan now” during a commercial. So. The whole interactivity thing, it’s for other people, not this people. Also, I didn’t bet on the outcome of the Molson Coors smackdown between Coors and Miller Lite, though the culminating Super Bowl ad was, well, we’ll get to that. But first …
