• Last year’s Super Bowl featured several ads that were political in nature. This year, companies focused more on humor and nostalgia.
• An ad for the Ram pickup that used a Martin Luther King Jr. sermon drew criticism online.
• Cindy Crawford, Peter Dinklage, Morgan Freeman and Jeff Bezos were among the famous faces featured in ads during the game.
• The New York Times provided live, drive-by-drive updates and analysis from Super Bowl LII.
As the Super Bowl headed into its final quarter, the ads continued to fluctuate between funny and somber. The N.F.L.’s own ad featuring the New York Giants’ Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr. re-enacting moves inspired by the movie “Dirty Dancing” was a hit, as was Amazon’s Alexa ad, which included Cardi B, Rebel Wilson and the company’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos.
“There’s definitely a humanitarian theme that is running through the spots,” said Margaret Johnson, chief creative officer of the agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners, which created the Doritos-Mountain Dew ad. “That and humor seem to be the two themes of the night.”
While there were no commercials connected to the #MeToo movement, some still saw progress when it came to the role of gender in Super Bowl ads.
“I was just thinking that one thing I haven’t seen are those ads that objectify women, which is refreshing,” Ms.
Johnson said. “And guess what? There’s still funny stuff on the air. We’re making progress.”Still, some wished that there was more humor.
“It’s really a pretty lame year,” said Marianne Malina, president of the agency GSD&M in Austin, Tex. “When the TV promos for the Olympics and ‘The Voice’ and the N.F.L. and Justin Timberlake overshadow a lot, that says everything.”
Ms. Malina pointed out that that was a shift from the political tone of last year.
“It’s an interesting insight into just the level of risk that people are comfortable with right now,” Ms. Malina said. “Last year, people had a very strong response, and now, a year later, people are confused. Everyone’s trying to get their head around all the things that are going on, so you can see how maybe the risk dial goes down.”
“But in reality,” she added, “the risk dial maybe needs to go up.”
Verizon was among the brands that took a somber route. Its ad showed images of rescue situations and carried the voices of people thanking emergency workers, ending with the words: “They answer the call. Our job is to make sure they can get it.”
“In a culture and a climate where it’s hard to find any kind of positive news out there at the moment, it felt like something we wanted to really lean into and take on a very different message,” said Andrew McKechnie, Verizon’s chief creative officer.
The blowback was swift for Ram after the carmaker used a sermon given by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the voice-over for one of its ads.
The general sentiment: Did it really just use Dr. King’s words about the value of service to sell trucks?
“MLK wanted equal rights and for me to buy a Dodge Ram,” one Twitter user
“It’s the wrong mistake to make given everything that’s going on in the U.S. right now,” said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “There’s so much emotion right now around race in this country that this was a high-risk move, and clearly it’s not going over very well.
“I think it was well intentioned, but they’re going to have a lot of explaining to do,” Mr. Calkins added. “They did not release this ahead of time, so they went for the surprise. They got that, but at the same time, they now have a big problem with feedback and people being upset.”
Adding to the disconnect, the sermon in question, delivered exactly 50 years ago, touched on the danger of overspending on items like cars and discussed why people “are so often taken by advertisers.”
Ram approached Dr. King’s estate about using his voice in the commercial, said Eric D. Tidwell, the managing director of Intellectual Properties Management, the licenser of the estate.
“Once the final creative was presented for approval, it was reviewed to ensure it met our standard integrity clearances,” Mr. Tidwell said in a statement on Sunday night. “We found that the overall message of the ad embodied Dr. King’s philosophy that true greatness is achieved by serving others.”
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles U.S. said in a statement: “We worked closely with the representatives of the Martin Luther King Jr. estate to receive the necessary approvals, and estate representatives were a very important part of the creative process every step of the way.”
The Super Bowl regularly draws elaborate schemes from advertisers, and this year is no exception. Tourism Australia — the Australian government agency responsible for attracting international visitors to the country — decided last April that it would buy a Super Bowl spot as part of a broader campaign geared toward drawing more visitors from North America.
The form it took: a big movie campaign for “Dundee,” a sequel to the movie “Crocodile Dundee,” starring the actors Danny McBride and Chris Hemsworth.
The catch: “Dundee” isn’t actually being made, despite the entertaining trailers that have been released for the film, its movie website and IMDB page, and a cast introduction video that includes appearances from a host of famous Australians, including Hugh Jackman, Margot Robbie, Isla Fisher and Russell Crowe.
“We did a scan around things like the Grammys and the Academy Awards and other sporting events like the N.B.A. Finals and the World Series, but the event that really stops this country is the Super Bowl,” said John O’Sullivan, the managing director of Tourism Australia. “It’s such a spectacle, right?…
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