Post-Match Analysis: Agencies React to Super Bowl LVI Ads [Little Black Book]
You hear those first few notes of “Woke Up This Morning,” you look up from your plate of gabagool. You see Satriale’s Pork Store and you start getting wistful for the drama that’s defined the last 25 years of TV. You see Meadow Soprano behind the wheel of a Chevy (she finally learned to park!) and a tear rolls down your cheek. You see AJ show up…well…I’m glad he got paid to show up. All I’m saying is this is now officially Sopranos’ canon and more effective nostalgia than The Many Saints of Newark.
[A trend I noticed was] the promise of utilitarian tech: while Meta struggles to define why you should give up corporeal form and forget about their flagging stock price, a number of brands actually demonstrated the value of innovation with real benefits. Camera phones that work for nonwhite skin tones (vital), EV trucks that are fun to drive (world-saving), home devices that anticipate your thoughts (creepy yet useful!). It felt like, for the most part, advertisers went beyond the sizzle and flash of fancy tech to show how innovations could improve our world, not just replace it with a digital one.
And Larry David selling crypto?? An anti-endorser tactic helps meet doubting audiences where they are, and Larry David is the universal voice of critics, judgement, and naysaying. It feels right to have him stand-in for all the sideline-crypto cynics and poke the crypto-bear in a way other brands in the space haven’t been able to do with their more self-serious approach. Kind of the perfect use of our generation’s sceptic-king.