Super Bored Awards 2023

I have a confession to make: I didn't actually watch that much of this year's Super Bowl.  I basically watched the second quarter, the halftime show, and then the last ten minutes or so.  There are a variety of reasons for this which I won't bore you with, but the upshot is that I didn't see that many ads live, and in the moment I remember thinking, "Huh, the ads aren't that bad this year."  So I wasn't going to bother to make a post at all, but then I thought, "Eh, maybe I should go back and see what else ran, and record my thoughts, because nothing says prime content time like a post on Super Bowl ads a week-plus after the game on a blog that now apparently makes one post a year."

Whatever. Here we go. (In any event, if I accidentally reference an ad that didn't air or didn't initially air during the game, it's because I had to rely on someone else's list of what was a Super Bowl ad.)

The Apple 1984 Memorial Award for Least Shitty Ad

I feel like this isn't normally the kind of ad I'd pick here, but this one just worked for me:

To be frank, I barely know who Jack Harlow is. But you have to give it to this ad: it has some good visual gags, a few decent jokes, Harlow sells his lines fairly well for a non-actor, the punchline plays, and the ad manages to make it clear what it's actually for right up front and again at the end. It's not brilliant or anything, but when it comes to Super Bowl ads the bar is fairly low.

Runners-Up: I'm sure a lot of people would have picked one of the two sappy dog ads here (only one of which was for actual dog food), but they were a bit much for me. The Amazon one doesn't make that much sense as an ad for Amazon (though I recognize they're beyond needing to do that, as a brand) and as for the Farmer's Dog, the less said about "I apparently love my dog more than my baby" the better.

The Actual 1984 Award for Most Dystopian Ad

There are only a handful of companies who could possibly win an award like this, which I felt moved to create specially for Google:

There are a lot of problems with this ad, starting with the fact that all the photos that need to be "fixed" pretty transparently look like they had the "problems" edited into them in the first place. I'm additionally wary of what kind of AI control over your photos would be required to effectively "unblur" them. But also... remember how in Soviet Russia, the Communist Party would edit photos to remove former key party members who later ran afoul of Stalin or other top brass and had to be disappeared? That's now a thing that a tech company is touting as a key feature of its cell phones. Cute? (And why did this ad need to be 90 seconds long? Did you think I wouldn't get the "erase your ex" joke unless Amy Schumer was there to explain it to me?)

Most Overproduced Ad

As ever, there are about 500 contenders for this one, but I settled on Kia.

That's a lot of driving and helicopter shots - many of which are shot at a pretty good distance from the car, which seems to kind of defeat the purpose of a car ad - all to end up at the single most predictable punchline that maybe any ad had this year (and there were quite a few).

Runner-Up: The production on this Workday ad isn't super high (it's not like that's an actual crowd behind Paul Stanley) but it's still a lot of arenas and mansions all for a single joke that, not for nothing, puts all of its eggs into the basket of "shitting on the people who use your product." I can barely tell what Workday is from watching it, and it refers to people who are already using Workday, so the implication is they spent "60 second Super Bowl ad money" on making fun of their own user base. Sure!

Cheapest Budget/Clumsiest Execution Award

And for the exact opposite of too much production, there's TurboTax:

Credit for paying the royalties for a song people would recognize, I guess.

Runner-Up: The Oikos ad featuring Deion Sanders and various members of his family, only some of whom appear to be Sanders in old-man makeup, is just kind of baffling. Am I supposed to know or care who these people are? And what did this have to do with yogurt?

Worst Use of "Humor" Award

In a true irony, one of the few celebrity ads to center itself on an honest-to-God comedian somehow turned out to be the least funny!

When the first Austin Powers movie did this joke - TWENTY-SIX MOTHERFUCKING YEARS AGO - it was funny. And to be clear, it was funny primarily because it was a parade of dick jokes. This takes the joke structure and changes the dick jokes to... the names of some famous people. It really is the apotheosis of Super Bowl advertising to put out a commercial where every "punchline" is literally just yelling the name of a celebrity appearing in the ad. It's also about as funny as the stomach cramps David Ortiz is going to get from that Kevin Hart cheese head. (Also, fuck sports betting apps.)

Runner-Up: There's a million, of course, but the "not that kind of shelter, Sarah" joke in the Busch ad is truly dire. Commercials asking you to remember other commercials are also just annoying. I couldn't give this an award though because I do like Sarah McLachlan's scared acting at the end.

Flimsiest Pretense Award

Avocados from Mexico rewound even further this year. All the way to the Garden of Eden. And hey, remember what the people in the Garden of Eden were?

This is the long version of the ad, so I'm guessing it might be a little more risque than the one that actually aired, but with this premise I'm sure there was plenty of skin on the airwaves on Super Bowl Sunday. We have to give them some credit: there's way more "buff male model" semi-nudity in this one than "sexy hot babe" semi-nudity, so at least that's equal opportunity ogling compared to many years in the past. But then you have to go out on a "looking right up at the Statue of Liberty's you-know-what" joke, so all points are forfeited.

Runner-Up: As I noted last year, the "sexy babes sell you a thing" ads are kind of a thing of the past, and just as well. So there's really no other ad that jumps out here.

The Rick Dalton Award for the Most Egregious Use of B-List Celebrities

There were several ads, including the DraftKings one already mentioned, that were really just a parade of cameos. But you gotta go with Uber One here:

When you go out of your way to build your ad around several 90s one-hit wonders, that is PRETTY egregious. But the "What Does the Fox Say" guys, a decade later? That puts this over the top.

Runner-Up: Downy building an entire ad around Danny McBride of all people, and then not even really trying to make it funny, is right up there.

Ironically, this year I felt like I needed to add a separate category for this one:

The Jack Nicholson Award for the Most Egregious Use of A-List Celebrities

Shockingly, this might have been a tougher award to hand out than the Dalton. Brie Larson and Jon Hamm talking about how their names sound like food? Ben Affleck getting scolded by Jennifer Lopez in the Dunkin drive-thru? Ordinarily J-Lo shilling for DD would do it for me, but since Affleck's affinity for Dunkin' Donuts is well-known and legitimate, I think we have to give it to T-Mobile:

Not only is there absolutely no reason for John Travolta to appear in this or any ad, but it's especially creepy because he could not look less like John Travolta these days. You really had to have him do a song from Grease just so it would be clear who this new neighbor even was.

Runner-Up: I actually don't think it's that terrible of an ad, but building an entire minute-long spot around Miles Teller dancing takes chutzpah.

The Bad Idea Jeans Award for Most Epic Miscalculation

E-Trade. Not because they did something scandalous like past winners of this award... but... well, maybe they did.

I'm trying to think of anything I wanted less than the return of the E-Trade baby. And it was definitely another ad that put babies in conspicuously adult situations so they'd end up making comments implying babies trying to get laid. The "you must be 18 to use E-Trade" fine print at the end is kind of the icing on this particular cake, although the fact that you can barely tell what E-Trade is from this ad, meaning they're relying almost entirely on "public goodwill for the E-Trade baby" as a product pitch, is also incredibly troubling.

SkyMall Championship Trophy for Weirdest Attempt to Sell a Product

I can envision how this ad was created.

"Okay it's time to come up with Remy Martin's Super Bowl ad. What have you got?"

"Okay uh..." *spins wheel* "...Serena Williams."

"...uh huh?"

"Ummm..." *throws dart* "...gives Al Pacino's Any Given Sunday speech?"

At least there's a connection to football, I guess?

Runner-Up: I already went at these Pringles ads last year, but this year's manages to be even worse somehow.

Worst Super Bowl Ad of 2023

When you know, you know. And I knew as soon as I saw this ad that I could not possibly hate it more.

If only those were B-list celebs fighting, this could have ticked nearly every box. It's dramatically overproduced, with unnecessary references to 25-year-old movies. It's substantially longer than it has any need or right to be. It's not funny. But most importantly, the only thing that almost does qualify as a joke in this ad is the "punchline" that... it's actually an ad for Blue Moon. That's right, the joke is that all these brands are actually owned by the same mega-conglomerate and the fight was all kayfabe in the first place. I suppose Miller Lite has been on this corner for decades (the idea of people fighting over whether it mattered more that Miller Lite "tasted great" or was "less filling" somehow sustained us for years in the 80s) but I just could not find oligopoly less funny in this day and age.