ads i watched:
- uber eats (ross and rachel, friends reunion between jen anniston and david schwimmer)
- mountain dew (parks & rec reunion between aubrey plaza and nick offerman)
- popeyes (ken jeong)
- doritos dinomitas (jenna ortega)
- t-mobile (too many celebrities)
- hellman’s mayo (i have no idea who that person was but pete davidson made an appearance)
- starry (ice spice)
the ad i felt was the most successful was the mountain dew commercial with aubrey plaza and nick offerman. in the commercial, aubrey reminds us that she is americas sweetheart (she’s never told a lie), and wants to inform us that we can have a blast (code for mountain dew) anywhere. we can even have a blast in the most mundane or inconvenient environments. nick offerman makes a single line appearance, “and with anyone?” to insinuate that not only can you have a blast anywhere, but that it can even be had amongst friends.
i’ll start with the cons. first is that it was too short. i think i can speak for us all when i say that we would’ve loved more aubrey. second is that mountain dew is awful and the bottles are even worse. perhaps they should consider a product redesign. why can’t aubrey have a blast but in a nice chilled glass? a blast but she’s poured it into a hard liquor bottle? a blast but she’s poured it into the half & half pitcher at your local coffee shop? it’s like the writers don’t even know her.
pros?
a reunion commercial is smart marketing. it’s hard to do it successfully though and in my opinion, they pulled it off. i can almost forget that mountain dew is making millions of dollars off of this.
having someone like aubrey who, as far as we know, isn’t going to:
1) pretend she loves something 2) give us a perfectly rehearsed sales pitch that leslie knope herself would’ve written or 3) try to convince us to buy something, helps lower our guards because it feels more authentic. our parasocial relationship with her and nick offerman (because of the huge success of parks and rec) makes us feel like we know the people on screen, so we trust them. it doesn’t feel like an ad, really. it just feels like another episode of a show we love and miss.
the second commercial i’d like to judge is the t-mobile commercial with various celebrities because i think it failed to do what the mountain dew commercial did so well.
pros:
– laura dern! love her.
– they had a nice cast of actors and the idea had potential. bradley cooper seemed to have the best script to work with (the only one that didn’t require much acting, which i don’t mean as a drag to him, the writing was just bad! i think he’s a great actor).
cons:
– it didn’t feel like a superbowl commercial. it’s also hard to believe that any of them are using t-mobile or auditioning to be part of something that is readily accessible to us non-celebs.
– the writing was theatrical and off putting. nothing about it felt authentic and none of them interacted with each other so it felt inconsistent on top of the inauthenticity.
in a nutshell, i think the t-mobile commercial did too much and they did too much badly. like, laura dern probably can cry on cue. why couldn’t we just have laura dern tell us about all of the things she can do? maybe have t-mobile audition for her? logistically, not sure how that would work with whatever it is they’re trying to sell but it would’ve been worth the effort to figure out. ***sidenote: that also proves my point about how bad the commercial was because what were they even trying to get us to do??? i learned nothing and i watched it twice*** alternatively, they could’ve kept it simple and just had her step back into her renata klein role. if laura dern is there, do you think we care about the guys from suits? we don’t!