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The star-spangled Super Bowl

There’s a word for people who have an overwhelming desire to be associated with stars. And we don’t mean astronomers. 

More than ever, this year’s Super Bowl advertising extravaganza seemed at times built-around showing off the charisma of the best Hollywood, TV or music star that a brand could get to shill their products. It’s been a trend over many years but perhaps, finally, it has reached a peak … in that there seems little room to get more starry. Indeed, in order to maximize the entertainment value, promoting the star seems to be now more important than leaving much trace of the brand picking up the bills. 

Yes, we’ve come a little late to the party of previewing/reviewing this year’s parade of Super Bowl commercials. It’s perhaps because we like to be polite: if you can’t say something nice, then say nothing at all, our mothers wisely advised. As ever, we can’t resist ignoring the guidance.

Beyoncé, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anthony Hopkins, Judge Judy, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Walken, Michael Cera (who he?), Drew Barrymore, Patrick Stewart … we could go on. But we couldn’t be sure of naming who they were being paid by. Or even explaining the storyline of some of the spots they were in.

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There’s a word for people who have an overwhelming desire to be associated with stars. And we don’t mean astronomers. 

More than ever, this year’s Super Bowl advertising extravaganza seemed at times built-around showing off the charisma of the best Hollywood, TV or music star that a brand could get to shill their products. It’s been a trend over many years but perhaps, finally, it has reached a peak … in that there seems little room to get more starry. Indeed, in order to maximize the entertainment value, promoting the star seems to be now more important than leaving much trace of the brand picking up the bills. 

Yes, we’ve come a little late to the party of previewing/reviewing this year’s parade of Super Bowl commercials. It’s perhaps because we like to be polite: if you can’t say something nice, then say nothing at all, our mothers wisely advised. As ever, we can’t resist ignoring the guidance.

Beyoncé, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Anthony Hopkins, Judge Judy, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Walken, Michael Cera (who he?), Drew Barrymore, Patrick Stewart … we could go on. But we couldn’t be sure of naming who they were being paid by. Or even explaining the storyline of some of the spots they were in.

That said, after several rounds of voting, we came up with the following as our pick of the Super Bowl. It’s a 1,2, 3 … because frankly we couldn’t face going further into the pile.  And we’re not going to explain our decision further. We liked these collectively more than we disliked them, which beat out the others. It’s like electing a leader. Sometimes the least worst wins (if you’re lucky). 

Lürzer's pick of the best 2024 Super Bowl ads

1: CeraVe, 'Michael CeraVe'

Extra points for being part of a clever multi-pronged connected campaign (but then a point deducted for being not a million miles away in the underlying strategy from the kind of thinking that informed last year’s Super Bowl spoof from M&Ms).  A sign of the times, seemingly massive cross-network stuff drawing across WPP, led by Ogilvy.

2.  BMW, 'Talkin' Like Walken'

Points for just giving lots of indulgence of Christopher Walken. Probably won’t buy a car though. We suspect Christopher Walken is way too cool to care about cars.

3. Squarespace, 'Hello Down There'

Not exactly Martin Scorsese’s greatest ever film, indeed might not make his Top 20 or so … but still it has a class and point of difference that makes it well worth seeing. Of course, we are not talking about the 30 second snippet version (c. $7m of media spend) that ran during the Super Bowl. You must watch the 90 second version to get a real sniff of the great man at work. Even then, we reckon there’s a three-and-a-half version that Marty is just waiting to roll out as his real director’s cut. 

That’s all, folks!  (Ah, if only Bugs Bunny agreed to appear in one, that could be a runaway winner for all ages.)

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