At the cost of $8 million for 30 seconds of airtime during Sunday’s Super Bowl, advertisers had a lot riding on their investments.
Who came out on top, and who missed the mark?
Art and advertising are in the eye of the beholder, of course, but according to the annual USA Today Ad Meter, Budweiser’s 90-second, $24-million spot slightly edged out Lay’s 60-second, $16-million touching “Little Farmer” commercial.
It’s a sign of the times that many parents hold their breath and maybe even the remote when the game goes to break each year. This year’s offering had its share of cringy and crass. From Hellmann’s Mayonnaise and WeatherTech floor mats to Novartis, plenty of mothers and fathers reached to mute, pause, or change the channel on Sunday evening.
But there were bright spots, no pun intended. In many of the instances, they were pro-life, pro-child and pro-family.
The NFL’s “Somebody” commercial drove home the importance of encouraging young people, stressing the need for them to be respected and protected. The 60-second ad ended with these white words on a black screen:
Everybody can be somebody if they have somebody to show them the way.
Dove Soap featured a carefree three-year-old girl on the run, noting it was her “unstoppable” chubby lugs that made it possible and how she might consider those same legs “unbearable” at fourteen. It’s up to mothers and fathers to help their children see their bodies as gifts from God.
Google’s “Dream Job” made clear that parenting, and in this case, fatherhood, is a role as important, if not more so, than any Fortune 100 CEO. Practicing for an upcoming interview, the dad talked about homelife as long hours working with a small team, multi-tasking, negotiating and collaborating.
Rocket, the “fintech” platform company probably best known for its mortgages, used the Super Bowl to launch a new campaign titled “Own the Dream.”
John Denver’s emotive “Take Me Home” was the soundtrack to the beautiful spot that began with a mother talking to her preborn baby, showed another baby being bathed in the sink, a father feeding his child, and a couple walking into their new house, which they proceed to fix up and turn it into a home.
In the same commercial, we see deployed military personnel showing off photos of their children, kids living, laughing, and playing – all in the warm glow of a family home. The spot ends with the tagline:
Everyone deserves their shot at the American Dream.
At 82 years-old, Harrison Ford made a surprising appearance in a two-minute-long commercial for Jeep.
Sitting in a stone cabin in the woods with a fire burning beside him, Ford begins, “The longest thing we ever do is live our lives. But life doesn’t come with an owner’s manual … But that means we get to write our own stories.”
So far, so good.
“Freedom is ‘Yes,’ or ‘No,’ or ‘Maybe,’” he continues. We then see scenes from war. “There are real heroes in the world, but not the ones from the movies.”
Still very good – but then a bit of a turn, literally and metaphorically, as we see several Jeeps drive in two separate directions.
“The most sacred thing in life isn’t the path,” Harrison Ford declares. “It’s the freedom to choose it … So, choose, but choose wisely. Choose what makes you happy.”
Everybody wants to be happy, but Christians aren’t called to make decisions based on their quest for personal happiness alone. Instead, we’re called to pursue God’s call on our lives to love and serve Him and others.
Believers recognize that the Christian faith is paradoxical: we find our true life when we lose it (Mark 8:34-35), God is strongest in us when we’re weakest (2 Cor. 12:10), and it’s the humble who will be exalted (Matthew 23:12).
Our Founding Fathers declared our right to pursue happiness, but Christian happiness can often be different than what many in the world consider it to be. The world says happiness is a big bank account, Christians says it’s giving until it hurts. Many will say happiness is a large house with few or no children – Christians will tell you that a large family in a small house represents true happiness.
We need to be careful reading too much into advertisements, but Madison Avenue is often a reflection of what they think consumers care about. If this year’s batch of Super Bowl ads are any indication, American companies see us as a divided nation with competing loyalties and priorities. It would be difficult to disagree with that assessment.
Image credit: Rocket
The post Some Super Bowl Ads Were Actually Pro-Life and Pro-Family appeared first on Daily Citizen.
Daily Citizen