1stAveMachine on Their Super Bowl Highlights

Think back to Sunday’s Super Bowl and remind yourself what you’re favourite spots were.

1stAveMachine’s director Ben Steiger Levine (BSL) and head of content Andrew Geller (AG) caught up with shots to share their preferred filling of the Super Bowl pie.

What were your favorite Super Bowl spots?

BSL: The one I remember from Sunday night that I enjoyed was the Budweiser Born the Hard Way commercial (above) – for political reasons. It talked about the Busch part of Anheuser-Busch immigrating to the United States and meeting some resistance before he was welcomed as an immigrant and set up his company here. I thought that it was great to see a big company like Budweiser get a little political and take a chance on some advertising even if it means frustrating some of its potential clientele by taking a bit of a stand politically. That was cool.

AG: You know, it's funny because I was thinking about that same thing and they definitely shot that commercial and were developing it so much further before all of this [Trump’s inauguration] went down. I was pretty impressed that they continued to release it after the current state of affairs in general. I was actually more impressed, though, that they had come up with and shot it, probably already had it in the can, while this was happening and they were like, “You know, screw it, we're going live with it.” I liked the spot itself as well.

BSL: The [TurboTax] Humpty Dumpty one was pretty awesome too. I didn't even know what product it was at first, but I do like the zany insane visuals and it was pretty awesome to see a creepy-looking egg splattered on the ground and people trying to put it back together. It’s not your usual sort of friendly commercial. There’s something quite dark about it I thought that I found really amusing.

What do you make of Big Game advertising?

BSL: Super Bowl seems like a forum to really showcase the creative side of advertising. It obviously ties very much into selling a product, but there's really an emphasis to push the creative envelope. And there's not that many forums for that anymore. Several years back, it became an amazing place to feature the kind of commercials I really like, which I guess are commercials that don’t really exist specifically as commercials. What got me interested in commercial making – i.e. commercials that couldn’t be documentaries, feature films or fashion shoots; things that can only really live as commercials – is their sort of very unique, very quirky, almost surreal visuals. I’m thinking specifically of some of Tom Kuntz’s work, especially his Fedex Super Bowl spot, Carrier Pigeons; it’s just the sense of humor and special effects and mixing it in a way you would never see in a film, really. There’s no other format to have that kind of experience.

AG: I think that’s totally true. It’s also funny going back and looking at how you have to keep outdoing yourself because the bar is set so high. Looking back at some of the old ones like the Coca-Cola Mean Joe Greene spot (below), you could grab an entire audience based on a dude giving a kid a jersey. Like, are you kidding? That would not even poke through now. You have to go live with Adam Driver and a whole set has to fall down on top of you in order to stand out amongst the crowd, you know? It’s an opportunity. Like, you know the creative’s gonna be really good, but it’s funny to think we’ve come this far already. In 10 years, how are our audiences gonna be reacting? And what are they gonna need in order to be the ones that are being talked about the next morning?

What do you think makes a good Big Game ad?

AG: The storytelling; let’s talk about that for a sec. I feel like commercials go a couple of different ways: It’s like you have the storytelling tearjerkers, and then you have these spectacle humorous spots. Just telling a good narrative can kind of hook you and pull you through.