The Super Bowl commercials for 2023 had a lot of themes seen in previous years: nostalgic callbacks, fun dance moves, and celebrity faces (literally, in one spot this year). 

In this episode of “Death to the Corporate Video,” Guy and Hope discuss the B2B entries in the 2023 Super Bowl: Squarespace, Workday, and Crowdstrike.

We also break down the favorite ads across these categories:

Most beautiful

Funniest

Made us cry

Best use of a celebrity

Most cringe

Most meh

Worst

Favorite

Miss any of the commercials we discussed? Watch all of this year’s spots.

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Transcript

Hope Morley: Your cold heart was not pierced by anything at the Super Bowl this year. 

Hope Morley: Hello and welcome to Death to the Corporate Video, a podcast with tools and advice for how to make B2B video ads your prospects actually want to watch. I'm Hope Morley.

Guy Bauer: I'm Guy Bauer.

Hope Morley: And we are coming to you the day after the Super Bowl. So it's advertising's biggest night these days. So we wanted to take a moment to debrief. There were some B2B ads in the Super Bowl this year. Not a big night for B2B. So we'll get into that. And then we're gonna run through some of our favorite ads and what we can all learn from them.

Guy Bauer: Yeah.

Hope Morley: And Guy, I know your, your team wasn't in the Super Bowl, so I think not a big football night for either of us.

Guy Bauer: No, and I was actually on a shoot, so I didn't even actually watch the game. Actually I did watch the last quarter and I will have to say as a Bengals fan, I believe we got screwed over by the refs when we played the Chiefs. And then I also believe the Eagles got screwed over that holding call. That was ridiculous. And what a dumb way to end a great game. Anyway, that's football chat. The phones are open. Give us a call. Let us know what you think. But I have to say that that was a BS call. The last two minutes were pointless. It's terrible.

Hope Morley: All right. Well, I paid more attention to the commercial breaks, so I tried to this year, I missed most of the first half too, honestly. But, let's start with talking about the B2B companies that represented this year. I counted three. Listeners, let me know if we missed any. But the big B2B player in this year's game was Workday had a very big, high budget, celebrity filled spot.

So that was the rock stars spot for anyone who saw it with the rock stars telling companies to stop calling their employees rock stars. Then we had CrowdStrike, which is like cybersecurity with the Trojan Horse spot. And then Squarespace, which I'll count as B2B, you know, kind of B2B, B2C with Adam Driver, the singularity spot.

So let's talk about those briefly before we get into the rest of the spots.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. What was your favorite of those?

Hope Morley: I thought the Squarespace Adam Driver was actually one of the best commercials all night. I thought it was well done. It had a premise that was like clearly connected to this product, which a lot of these Super Bowl commercials, the problem I have with them is they have like a really tenuous connection to what the product is or they're really stretching for a joke, but this one, like a website that makes websites and he kept repeating that in a way that it's like it gets into your head of like, he was able to say what it does over and over and over again.

And Adam Driver is appealing, I liked it. I thought it was beautifully done. Well shot, actually like a good use of budget. I liked it.

Guy Bauer: Yeah, I agree. You lean into that spot because it's weird. And then it is funny, you know, not laugh out loud, but definitely, you know, and you get it, like you said, my critique of Workday is, there's one joke I like in it where the guy almost says rockstar and then Paul Stanley like, go, goes in the door. And then the guy was like, oh, I wasn't gonna say it. And then the way they have Paul Stanley leave the door is like, so cartoonish and, and stiff and weird. But I just have to say, what does Workday do after watching that spot? It has something to do with, I don't know, an office. Like, who knows?

Hope Morley: It could have been like any enterprise SaaS company could have done that concept. It was not specific to Workday.

Guy Bauer: And I also feel the whole “stop calling people rock stars” was like three years ago. That was like a thing. Like it's not rock stars. People aren't, what are the other things that like,

Hope Morley: Like ninjas, gurus.

Guy Bauer: Right, exactly.

Hope Morley: Like all that was really trendy about five years ago. And then the backlash. Yeah, you're right. Hit a couple years ago.

Guy Bauer: Well, and now it's gotten so far that at this point, people are like, stop gatekeeping. Like, it's okay. Call them rock stars. It's wrapped so far around, I feel like. But the other thing is like, we're on the inside. That's the thing is like you get two in your head of like, whoa, that's already off-trend, you know, to 99% of people, they don't see that history.

I thought it was pretty basic creative.

Hope Morley: Yeah. A good use of celebrity. You know, they got some really good people in there, but yeah.

Guy Bauer: It was basic. Sorry. That one Paul Stanley gag at the end though was pretty good. The way he leaves the room, you know what I'm saying? Like they, I think they literally had someone like just move him cuz it's just a weird way of leaving the room. It was directed well, I don't, I think the creative was whatever. And then the Trojan horse thing was also whatever.

I don't know, I just,

Hope Morley: It's a bit of an obvious metaphor for cybersecurity. You know, the Trojan horse thing is, that's kind of a first idea type thing. Like it was well done, but it was kind of forgettable.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. Forgettable is how I would classify, yeah. 

Hope Morley: it's kind of how I'd actually classify the entire Super Bowl commercials. Like I really, we'll talk about some of our favorites later, but this was not a good year in my opinion. Not a lot of standouts. But one thing I, one point I wanted to make before we move on from the B2B angle of this, because I was thinking about, you know, the counter-argument for why B2B companies should not advertise in the Super Bowl is, well, there's millions of people watching, but you know, only a tiny fraction of them are actual buyers, right?

Like, how many people are in charge of purchasing decisions for HR software and would buy Workday? But I was thinking about this. So my husband's company uses Workday. It's their HR tracking. That he's supposed to log his vacation days and stuff like that in. And I was like, well, if Workday or companies like it can increase their brand awareness and get some goodwill among users. If more people like my husband, who don't make purchasing decisions, but if people in the company are using the product more, then the people who made the purchasing decisions can see that more people are using it and they're more likely to keep it. You know what I mean? So it's a way to encourage people who maybe already have these systems in their company that they're like, oh, you know, I have Workday. They made that funny commercial, like, oh yeah, I guess we should use that thing that my company pays for. So it could be a little bit of an indirect way to just get more goodwill throughout the enterprise, and get more people just aware of companies like Workday and aware of what you do and then, you know, if you get more usage, you get more returning customers.

Guy Bauer: Sure. Yeah. And I also think like, well, everyone does watch the Super Bowl and watch commercials, so like those companies will see, at least brand awareness go up, because every single decision maker is watching the Super Bowl, or at least watching the commercials. So, yeah, the Super Bowl is well worth the money, like even people like Gary Vaynerchuk who are against broadcast, his whole caveat is broadcast is dumb except the Super Bowl. And his company, VaynerMedia. 

Hope Morley: They had a bunch of spots.

Guy Bauer: You look at which agencies do these spots,there's a lot of Super Bowl spots that are his agency. So, I think for the Super Bowl, all bets are off in terms of like making the argument. Non Super Bowl. Yeah, that's a good non Super Bowl argument for like connected TV and stuff is that decision makers may not be on, but active users are on. And if you can get your, the active users of your, you know, company's software or whatever, to just be more aware of it. Yeah. Maybe active users go up and then yeah, re-subscriptions go up. Yeah. I think that that holds water. Yeah.

Hope Morley: All right, so let's go into the rest of the ads. So we have a couple categories, like Guy and I will each share our top choice for each of these categories. So we often categorize ads in three categories. We like to say that the best effective ads are either beautiful, they're funny, or they make you cry.

So let's first go through those three categories and then we have some more fun ones too. So let's start with, beautiful. What was, what did you think was the most beautiful ad was? So beautiful could mean well shot, you know, inspirational.

Guy Bauer: Yeah, usually beauty has to, you know, I'm surprised Turkish Airlines cuz their spots always have the best, beauty. But they didn't advertise this year.

Hope Morley: Not a lot of travel this year.

Guy Bauer: Yeah.

Hope Morley: Last year had a lot.

Guy Bauer: I guess, I guess my pick would be the Tubi rabbit one. It was a combination of beautiful and funny, but I thought that that was pretty beautiful, like the way it was shot and everything. The avocados spot. I don't think that that was like they were, I don't know, maybe I'm not the demographic, you know, with the punchline and everything, but I thought that was beautiful too.

Hope Morley: My beautiful choice is one that I'm throwing in here that I liked but didn't fit into any of my other categories, but that was the Jeep electric car commercial with the dancing animals, because I really liked the Electric Slide. They did a completely new remix version of that. How last year was the Super Bowl of EV car commercials and nobody used the song Electric Slide last year, like missed opportunity.

And I thought that one was just fun and it kind of kept with the spirit of a good Super Bowl spot that, it just made you happy. So I think that's beautiful to be, feel happy afterwards.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. What's next?

Hope Morley: Up next is funny.

Guy Bauer: Oh, well, there's only one spot that made me laugh out loud. That I can't get outta my head and let me see if Hope knows. Who knows me? Hope. What do you think? That spot was laughed out loud.

Hope Morley: Laughed out loud. Um, I'm not sure.

Guy Bauer: Okay. It would, it's the Paramount Mountain Stallone climbing up Stallone's face telling Stallone not to sneeze.

Hope Morley: I should have guessed that one. Yep.

Guy Bauer: That was genius. And he is like, oh, I need surgery. That was really. I thought that was a perfect use of Stallone, I love when celebrities are used like that, where it's like he's making fun of himself, like it's very self-deprecating. I thought that that was just like, cute, funny, and I laughed out loud and it's just so weird.

Like, just so like, who thought of that? Like, oh, don't make him sneeze.

Hope Morley: Yeah. Nothing really made me laugh out loud this year either. Nothing really too funny. One I put here that I thought was kind of funny and not laugh out loud, but cutesy funny. I put in the T-mobile spot with John Travolta for this, where they were singing Summer Loving, cuz I thought that was funny. And I'm like, why? I don't, I have no idea why you would sell home internet with songs from a musical that came out 40 years ago, but I enjoyed it.

Guy Bauer: The only thing though is Olivia Newton-John just died and I'm like, isn't it, is it too soon?

Hope Morley: Hmm. I didn't even think of that.

Guy Bauer: All I was thinking about was her dead that like she just died. I've two honorable mentions for other funny ones. One was the other T-Mobile, which was the Bradley Cooper with his mom.

I thought that was so cute.

Hope Morley: I thought that was so cringe. Did not like that at all.

Guy Bauer: All right. We'll have to get into that. We have a cringe category. The other one is the Pringles hand. That was from last year. But I love the ending line where like even the baby has a Pringles hand and he's like, but grandpa, that doesn't make sense. He's like, it doesn't matter. Thanks Grandpa.

Hope Morley: I loved the Pringles hand one last year. This year it was kind of like, okay, this was good last year. It kind of like, you know, not as good. The sequel's never as good as the original, but.

Guy Bauer: That last line was really good though. I liked that.

Hope Morley: Yeah.

Guy Bauer: But Stallone Stallone, I mean, I could watch that forever.

Hope Morley: Um, alright, so then last is the make me cry category. So, best emotional spot. We gotta have the same one for this, right?

Guy Bauer: Uh, nothing made me cry at all. What's yours?

Hope Morley: The dog food!

Guy Bauer: Oh, come on. That was so basic.

Hope Morley: No, it had to be the, oh, come on. You tell me that you didn't tear up with the –

Guy Bauer: No, no. BEcause I knew where it was going the entire time. No, no. Sorry. I mean, I get it. I get it. Nah, it's not my dog. I don't care about other people's dogs either. Like, I really don't. I'm sorry, I don't care.

Hope Morley: But the dog was there for her?

Guy Bauer: Oh, gimme a break.

Hope Morley: Everyone wants their dog to live longer.

Guy Bauer: It was, I mean, it was good. It was good. Didn't make me cry. I felt no emotion at all at any of these spots. 

Hope Morley: That was really, there wasn't a lot of the, there weren't a lot that were trying to be emotional, make you cry this year.

Guy Bauer: I'm trying to think like, well, there was, there was, but I, I thought it was awful. There was like a Remy Martin with Serena Williams.

Hope Morley: That fell so flat for me.

Guy Bauer: And like she was reading, like it had no poetry. Like it was just like, it was just standard, like standard, standard, standard. ChatGPT could write. Like if you were like, write me an emotional thing for Remy Martin, like that's what ChatGPT would come up with.

Hope Morley: Yeah, it was very flat and like it was, parts of it were very well shot. Like there was dancers in part of it that were really beautiful. But yeah, it was like dancers and then it was football and then it was just like other people. It was like what? I dunno. Yeah.

Guy Bauer: Yeah, that was, I guess trying, it was like motivational or whatever, but yeah, nothing.

Hope Morley: Your cold heart was not

Guy Bauer: My hardest

Hope Morley: pierced by anything at the Super Bowl this year. Okay. So let's go to a couple other categories. So let's move on to the best use of a celebrity. So I was gonna say the Stallone one for this.

Guy Bauer: Oh, okay.

Hope Morley: Because it's actually a good, like, you could only use, I mean, not that you could only do that with him.

Guy Bauer: No, you're right.

Hope Morley: But it was like the joke relied on him.

It was a good, you know, famous face that everybody knows. That would be one of mine. I have a couple honorable mentions here too.

Guy Bauer: I agree. I agree with you. That is a good use of a celebrity because it's, it was written for that, like, it's just whoever wrote that is just, I, I'm a fan. I guess mine would be the Uber One.

Hope Morley: That was one of my honorary mentions. I really, I liked that one. It was cute.

Guy Bauer: Yeah, it brought like people back and, and I just love the pun. I love the ending where, where Uber is like upset at this.

Hope Morley: They're just like, what?

Guy Bauer: I love Diddy's umbrella guy or whatever, the assistant who's like speaking Swedish to the what does the fox say guy and like, just a very, like, that was just a smart ad well done. And yeah, all the celebrities are there for a reason. You know what I mean? When the celebrities are there.

Like, that's what I didn't like about Workday. Well, I guess they're all rock stars.

Hope Morley: But you could have put in any rockstar, right? Like, it didn't have to be Ozzy Osborne, right? Like it, they just needed rock stars.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. I don't know. Anyway, so anyway, Uber One is how you would do that.

Hope Morley: Yeah, Uber One was in my honorable mention. I also loved Snoop Dogg for Sketchers because like why? And like, yeah, I love Snoop Dogg and Martha together. Just that always just brings a smile to my face.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. And actually I will say, I was like impressed with the Sketchers design of their sneakers.

Hope Morley: Right?

Guy Bauer: I was like, Hey.

Hope Morley: It made you look twice at Sketchers. I'm like, really? Sketchers? The ad starts, you're like, Sketchers, I buy those for my kids. And then you're like, but Snoop looks cool.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. Yeah. They made, they looked cool.

Hope Morley: Yeah. Alright. Next category is best use of nostalgia. So Super Bowl ads love nostalgia. There was a ton of this going through. What would be your choice for that?

Guy Bauer: Best use of nostalgia. Oh, you go first.

Hope Morley: My choice for this was the Clueless ad, the Rakuten, the shopping app with Alicia Silverstone. She looks fantastic by the way. They made a joke at the end about how, like, are you still in high school? And I'm like, she kinda looks like she's like 25 I like that one. And you know, she, again, talking about a good use of a celebrity, like Clueless is all about shopping.

So it's a much closer tie than some of these other nostalgia plays.

Guy Bauer: I don't know, like either I was just too tired cuz I was literally on an 11 hour shoot yesterday doing a commercial. Nostalgia, I guess. Well, I guess, my mind immediately goes to Uber one and the what does the Fox say guys? Like, I really love that song. And that was cool that they brought them back.

And then I guess I would go to, I don't know if this even counts as nostalgia, but like Will Ferrell going through all the shows on Netflix?

Hope Morley: Yeah, I almost feel like Will Ferrell just using Will Ferrell is nostalgic when you think about Will Ferrell, you mostly think about him at the peak of his fame in like the early two thousands. You know, like when he did like Old School and Elf and all those movies that came out back then.

So I almost feel like he's kind of a nostalgic celebrity.

Guy Bauer: I'm just scrolling through.

Hope Morley: There were also, there was like the CaddyShack, Michelob one.

Guy Bauer: That one's bad.

Hope Morley: That was that not good?

Guy Bauer: Yeah. I'm just looking through.

Hope Morley: The Ben Stiller one where he was Zoolander.

Guy Bauer: Yeah.

Hope Morley: And that was okay and then there was like, I would count the Breaking Bad chips one. 

Guy Bauer: Right. That'll be my winner. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I thought that was really good. But you know, the thing is, here's the other thing. I saw that commercial like three weeks ago, you know, like it's not exciting anymore. I don't understand. Just keep, you know, like keep it special for the big game. 

Okay. It'll be Breaking Bad for me. Yes.

Hope Morley: That one was fine for me, but it was also, I'm kind of like, that show went off the air so long ago. I guess now you can play in the nostalgia play, but I'm like, really? Why are you bringing back these characters now? 

Guy Bauer: I thought it was well done. I thought it looked like Breaking Bad made it. That's why I liked it. Like it looked, it obeyed all the rules, you know how like sometimes when like a TV commercial company tries to do something with actors from a movie or a show, like, and it just doesn't, it's not the same vibe because the commercial people have to make it differently.

But I thought that that looked like the show. I thought it was well done. Well done.

Hope Morley: All right. Next category. Let's go to, this will be more fun. Let's go to cringe. What commercials made you cringe?

Guy Bauer: All right. Now I want to hear why the Bradley Cooper's mom commercial made you cringe.

Hope Morley: I mean, that wasn't my choice for cringe. It felt so forced to me. Like I just didn't, yeah, it did not seem real to me. But I did like her little dig when he was like, I've been nominated nine times. She was like, you never won. Like that was funny.

Guy Bauer: Yeah, I thought it was, I don't know, maybe it was just because I was tired. But I feel like, because my mom is like that, my mom is also like that. Like, if they were like, Guy, make a commercial with your mom, that's how it would end up. To me it was extremely believable. And I kind of think that that is actually what happened is like the commercial flopped, like they couldn't make it cause she didn't know her lines.

And then somewhere, you know, someone was like, let's just turn that into the commercial. I don't know. 

Hope Morley: It felt staged to me. They were trying to be like, she's not an actor. Let's just do it like outtakes.

Guy Bauer: I thought that that was like, I don't know, it was a very cute commercial. It just reminded me of my mom. Yeah, I like that one.

Hope Morley: No, my actual choice for cringe is Hellman's Mayonnaise with Jon Hamm and Brie Larson and Pete Davidson.

Guy Bauer: Why is that cringe?

Hope Morley: Because it was dumb! Because I'm so sick of Pete Davidson everywhere. It was one of those like, it felt like your first idea thing. They're like, what celebrities have names that are food and it's also like Hamm and Brie.

Like you don't put mayonnaise on brie. Why would you have mayonnaise on brie? I don't eat cheese, but like I know that you don't put mayonnaise on brie.

Guy Bauer: All right. 

Hope Morley: Hamm I guess makes sense cuz you're making like a sandwich, but.

Guy Bauer: I just can't be mad at Jon Hamm. I love him.

Hope Morley: I do too. See, that's why I'm extra mad because I like Jon Hamm, so I want to like it, and I like Brie Larson too.

Guy Bauer: My cringe would be, and I know they're a Chicago company, High Dive, but I thought the Premature Electrification was just like, oh, come on. I thought it was dumb.

Hope Morley: Yeah, I thought that was fine. I would put that in kind of the meh category.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. I guess it's not like cringe. It wasn't, yeah.

Hope Morley: Yeah, it was like I get what they were going for and kind of the overcoming objections thing. But yeah, that didn't really do much for me.

Guy Bauer: Yeah, it wasn't really cringe, the cringe one then was the QR code for like, that game.

Hope Morley: Oh yeah.

Guy Bauer: That was just like done.

Hope Morley: It was to get an NFT, wasn't it?

Guy Bauer: Yeah. To get like a mint or something.

Hope Morley: And I'm like, are we still doing NFTs? Aren't we done with that?

Guy Bauer: Nothing really stands out to me as like, oh god, ugh, cringe. 

Hope Morley: So this is, I don't know if this is cringe, but I also really rolled my eyes really hard at the Kia commercial with the Binky dad thing, because that is like, okay, to me it's like. It felt like one of those moments that everyone on the internet is celebrating a father for doing the bare minimum of parenting, and then the kicker at the end of the joke, like the joke at the end is that he didn't even know what binky he was going back to get.

It played on a lot of stereotypes that I don't like. Fathers like not actually knowing how they take care of their own children. And then also that like the whole world was celebrating him for being such a good dad for going back to get the binky when it's like you shouldn't have forgotten it in the first place.

Guy Bauer: Or just go buy a binky. That's like what a real dad would do. Like just go buy one. Just go to the closest. You know what I mean? Like you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't drive for a stupid thing, you'd just go buy it.

Hope Morley: Yeah.

Guy Bauer: There was honestly our next category is meh. I think there was so much meh.

Hope Morley: Yeah, let's, we'll get in. Let's get into the meh. Lots of meh for me.

Guy Bauer: I mean, I'm just looking through the ads here.

Hope Morley: One that came to mind right away with meh for me was the avocados from Mexico thing with Adam and Eve that I'm like, why? I don't know. 

Guy Bauer: I also didn't get it.

Hope Morley: I didn't get it either. I'm like, wait, she already ate the apple and then they gave her an avocado and then the world was okay with naked people. I'm like, wait, but she already ate the apple. It doesn't make sense.

Guy Bauer: It didn't, the whole premise didn't make sense, which then nothing else can make sense if the whole premise doesn't make sense. Yeah. So that was meh, the Pepsi spots, like I get it. The other thing, that's the thing, I've seen those for two weeks. So like Ben Stiller and Steve Martin, they were okay.

Hope Morley: Yeah, those are fine.

Like the Downy one with Danny McBride. I'm like, who cares about that?

Guy Bauer: It was okay. One of them I did like was, Sorry, we're hopping around here like Ben Affleck, Dunkin Donuts. 

Hope Morley: Oh yeah, that, that was cute.

Guy Bauer: That was okay.

Hope Morley: That's another good use of a celebrity because he's very tied to Boston and so is Dunkin Donuts. So it's like it, it worked. That works for me.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. But I would say my favorite commercial out of everything this year, and I know we're not, we're in this, it's the meh category, but I don't wanna forget, is actually the hold music with Miles Teller.

Hope Morley: Oh yeah. That was cute.

Guy Bauer: I thought that that was like, that's what a Super Bowl spot should be. 

Hope Morley: Yeah, that was Bud Light.

Guy Bauer: I've always thought that with that song, they like got that song and it's got like a punchline, but it's also got like a celebration of life and that's kind of like what beer is. So I thought that that was like really good, really good.

Hope Morley: Yeah, that one was good.

Guy Bauer: The Busch one with Sarah McLaughlin at the end with the, “you're with a wolf.” That was good. 

Hope Morley: See, I didn't like that one. I thought that was too much of a stretch. They were like, oh, not that kind of shelter. I'm like, it felt like they were, it felt like one of those ads and some Super Bowl ads feel like this, that they're working backwards from something that they decided, like they wanted to do a parody of like the Sarah McLaughlin shelter ad and they had to figure out how to get there.

Guy Bauer: Hmm.

Hope Morley: It's so, it just felt very contrived to me.

Guy Bauer: And you're probably right, that's probably exactly how they did it. The E-trade people, meh. Like usually E-trade is good.

Hope Morley: I know I like the E-Trade baby, but that one was definitely meh. Wasn't good. Wasn't bad.

Guy Bauer: Temu, meh.

Hope Morley: Yeah.

Guy Bauer: It was cool looking I guess. But meh. And then the ultimate meh was, I just, maybe I'm just too old, was the thing with golfing and dance and Serena Williams again for Michelob or something.

Hope Morley: Yeah.

Hope Morley: Yeah. Who was it even for?

Guy Bauer: I think it was for Michelob or, it says Ultra Club. I don't know.

Hope Morley: Probably Michelob Ultra.

Guy Bauer: It was just like, it, like just hadn't, I don't know. I think that was, I think I'm too old, to be honest with you, to appreciate that one.

Hope Morley: Alright. Was that your worst?

Guy Bauer: Honestly, we're hopping around so much now. I can't even the, that one and avocados were both.

Hope Morley: Yeah. Avocados just didn't make a lot of sense to me.

Guy Bauer: DraftKings wasn't that great.

Hope Morley: The M&Ms was kind of stupid and I love Maya Rudolph, so I don't like saying that.

Guy Bauer: Of course, like Weather Tech. What's funny is Weather Tech it started like, I was like, oh, maybe they're gonna do something cuz they're like, we don't build factories here. I'm like, oh, maybe there's gonna be a story here. And then, no, it just turned into a nothing.

Hope Morley: It was just like ah, no, this conversation never happened. 

Guy Bauer: Yes.

Hope Morley: No. It was all just like a bunch of fake conversations that you're watching. You're just like, nobody ever said that to you. I didn't get, so maybe I'm just getting old too, but like the DoorDash commercial with the grocery store, I didn't know who any of those celebrities were, so I'm just getting to the point that if your entire joke hinges on a celebrity and you don't know who it is, I didn't get it.

Guy Bauer: Are those celebrities?

Hope Morley: I assume, or else it really makes no sense.

Know. We're just both admitting that we're, you know, over 30.

Guy Bauer: Outta touch. Now I guess we're losing all categories. I think the, the brand that won, I would say is Tubi, because they did that thing, the fake out, which didn't fake me out, but –

Hope Morley: But it was creative and I give them again, it's a good use of the medium, like when you're actually at people watching live tv, like you can do that fake out really effectively.

Guy Bauer: And then I also like the rabbit hole, like, you know what I mean? I love the idea of these huge rabbits, like what is going on? Then I love the follow up spot where like that woman is gardening and she just sees a huge carrot with a big chomp taken out of it, and you're like, oh God, you're, you know what I mean?

Hope Morley: Oh, I missed that one. I didn't see that there were three.

Guy Bauer: Yeah, it was like a follow up spot. And, it's almost like a reverse teaser, like it was after the main rabbit hole won. But like, you know what's gonna come next? She's gonna get attacked by a giant rabbit. I thought that was like really good. I thought they won the night to be honest.

Hope Morley: They, they get points for sure for taking the best advantage of having a live TV audience and really thinking about the medium and using the medium properly.

Guy Bauer: Yeah.

Hope Morley: I would agree with that, but my favorite overall was Squarespace. Like I said, I thought it was good.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. Adam Driver has such gravity to him, and they used him correctly because he is like that. 

Hope Morley: You're just like, I need an actor to have an existential crisis about a website that makes websites. 

Guy Bauer: Yeah. 

Hope Morley: I liked that one. I just, I hadn't seen it before. That's the other thing too, like so many of these ads you're like, I've kind of seen a version of this before, but that one, I've never seen that before.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. No, that was good. I'm still like, it's been a few years, It's been a few years for me for something that I truly will never forget.

Like in terms of Super Bowl ads.

Hope Morley: I'm gonna forget all these ads by Wednesday. 

Guy Bauer: Yeah. Well, and I'll probably never forget the Pringles hand. But it's not like I think about it a lot like I do other, like, you know, other Super Bowls. So yeah. Let's all get better people and we need more B2B.

Hope Morley: Yeah, let's regroup and do better next year.

Guy Bauer: Mm-hmm.

Hope Morley: All right. Thanks everyone for listening today. If you completely disagree with everything that we said on the show today, feel free to write us an email or reach out to us on social media. You can find us on our website at umault.com. That's U M A U L T.com. You can email us hello@umault.com or find us across all the social media channels at Umault.

And thanks for listening.

Guy Bauer: Yeah. And we'll, we'll post all the Super Bowl spots. So you can follow along at home, because I know we jumped around a lot. 

Hope Morley: Yeah.

Guy Bauer: Yeah, thanks for listening. Talk to you later.

Hope Morley: Bye.