so Super Bowl ads are 8 million bucks each now the big question is is it worth it and what can you learn from them as a business to improve your advertising I'm Alex rosi I acquisition. comom I've run millions of dollars of ads and today I'm going to tear up the ads at the Super Bowl across 6 key factors to determine whether it was a touchdown or fumble isn't that cute cute little analogy touch down or fumo first up Google take it away so at my last job I was working across several different groups um you know what let me practice that one again okay when you're ready tell me about the job that taught you the most okay well it was a role where I learned to take constructive criticism I think she like oh no doesn't like it okay I got pretty used to you know working long hours with a small team I got very comfortable uh multitasking and I had to become really organized not bad but try rephrasing your answer to sound more confident right right okay I was asked to make a lot of quick decisions and do a lot of negotiating one more book talk about your experiences working with others oh Dad well I'm at my best when I'm collaborating if it's for the team I'll do whatever it takes this job description you shared mentions on the job training well I am a fast learner I don't always have all the answers but to get the job done gas no matter how long it takes and I'm not afraid to admit when I'm wrong but most importantly I show up every day no matter what all right last question when it comes to work what motivates you there she go I guess knowing that people can depend on me [Music] and knowing I can depend on them [Music] too that's a great answer sounds like you're [Music] ready hey James thanks for joining us it's good to see you all I've been looking forward to talking so real quick what we're going to be ranking these on is did it grab attention uh did it make you care did it sell the dream did it create urgency did it show social proof and most importantly did it tell you what to do next this ad I think was exceptional honestly I think it was exceptional for a number of reasons the first is that they draw this really you know very sentimental story arc was almost like the up movie where you get the whole love story in you know 2 minutes at in the movie this was basically that just done in like 30 seconds but they were able to weave in product demonstration and usage throughout the entire thing which I think made it incredibly compelling in terms of what to do next at the end I mean they tell you about the product but I think what they really drive is uh sentiment uh with this ad which is that I think a lot of people would be like I resonate with any one or many of those slides because either you've been the kid you've been the adult you've been the one for the job they actually cut a lot of different audiences by showing all these very human experiences and they've done it they did it super well in terms of proof they're literally demonstrating in terms of urgency I don't think it would be on brand for them to create urgency so I would knock them for that it's just very direct response and so big picture the Google G Gemini ad I think I'm moved to s tier I think it was exceptional I haven't seen the rest of the ads but I'm I'm bullish on the start I know so ad number two is ramp. com hey should we pull saquin off the field right now to submit his expenses you better not say [Music] yes switch your business to ramp.
com so this was a short ad obviously what is this 15 seconds so they probably spent four or 5 million for this ad instead of the full 8 for 30 unless it was 8 for 15 somebody can fact check me anyways I think the hook was contextual to the audience that was watching which was a football player right and so that made sense question based hook around pain fundamentals and I'm a big fan of this and I think not a a lot of business owners do this but it's demonstration they start with a pain based hook of what it's like to not have the product and then they just immediately solve it with having the product through demonstration I mean if you're talking about 15 seconds to get a point across I think it was a pretty effective ad I probably would have done more with the end screen personally and I probably would have said switch your business to rather than have it just be audio main reason is a lot of people are you know watching TV from afar they don't have uh you know subtitles on so I tend to be over indexed on text personally but that's just my own opinion I would put that as an a I think it was a good ad so ad three is booking. com let's run it with hotels and vacation rentals booking. com has something for everyone she you got Boutique we we wee right this way now we're talking what about something more family friend L maybe a resort with a water park or somewhere less family friendly yep one Vegas hotel for the bride to be what if we hate everything we have free cancellation find exactly what you're booking for booking.
com booking personally not a huge fan of it it felt super tvisha TV but it felt like an old ad like it was a new it's obviously it's a new ad but like obviously the Muppet are an old brand but it just felt like 2005 television that's just that's that was my initial impression they tried to demonstrate the use cases I think the humor wasn't like super funny and so I think I had a more difficult time of being like Oh I'm this Avatar personally and so I probably would have done this at completely differently uh if it were me I probably would put this I don't know if I want to use up a d d all the way I'll probably I'm going to put this as a c put this as a c I didn't like starting with booking. com that's what the first thing you see is booking I don't know what that is yet they hint at some pain I had a harder time because the cuts were Cuts were fast but weren't explanatory like I didn't know where we were going just felt super mid like compare that to the Google ad it's like like I what are we even talking about like I feel like it's not even close so ad number four from Doritos is made from a fan contest I'm actually really pumped to watch this one aliens Det come on man Dorito Dorito yeah all right I like this ad uh what's really interesting is that there's no basically no words which I find uh great so this is all like creative if you want to think about from that perspective if you think about psychological triggers here though what what they're showing is that something super desired right not only that it's that somebody would literally risk their life in order to keep it but then they they closed the loop at the end and showed that it's actually like peace one person sharing with another so as as much as it's I don't know if it was deliberate or not but there's actually a lot of um kind of like human psychology stuff that's kind of built into this I'm a fan I wouldn't I mean this is very on brand for Doritos which is just like crazy bold right like it's almost like they have a Red Bull brand but for chips so kind of interesting there the way the duritos did this is the way that I would do this uh which is at the end of the day like I'm going to I'm going to we're going to spice up these ads and I'll I'll break down some of the things that I would have considered doing you can't beat data and so like you might have an opinion somebody else might have an opinion but at the end of the day the best ad that's on here is the one that drove the most sales now obviously a big part of that happens with uh past history of brand and so some advertisements have different objectives right a lot of some ads might just be purely branding they want to build positive sentiment of uh positive association between their product or their company and you know the Target demographic or audience some of them just reinforcing the existing position like Doritos is some of them are a pre-ir response ad so I think it really depends the objective but for here from a data perspective if zillions of people already submitted different ads and this one got upvoted the most or shared the most then you already know you have almost like a pre-baked winner and so like when I wrote the leads book which is all about advertising one of the one of the things that I break down in here is if you see this on page 37 and all the way through I did headline tests for the headline of this book and so I could have talked to five people and said hey do you like $100 million advertising or do you like $100 million uh leads or do you like milon promotions you're like $1 million marketing right I could have gone through all of these different notations but instead I just let the data talk what they did was they let the data talk and fundamentally who am I to say one thing is better than another but this was obviously the most viral ad that they they were able to source and here's the even more brilliant part it cost them basically nothing they just let the audience make it for them which is basically crowdsourcing or advertising which I'm a big fan of and one of the great things about building communities which you can check out at school. com so they gave a million bucks for winning but for most of these big ad agencies it would cost them more than a million dollars to to make the ad and not even be sure if it's going to be good or not here they got to spend a million dollars to crowdsource from the best creators out there that obviously love their product and if a customer makes an ad for your product they're going to know it more intimately that anyone will at some Ad Agency where there's a bunch of you know tween trying to figure out like whatever the hell they figure out um this is people who actually use the product and so also as another quick uh side note you might not be the demo so if you when I say demo I mean demographic so like you might not be the target so if some of these ads are like I don't know if this really like ramp might not have like if if you're a business owner ramp makes sense if you don't own a business you probably don't care at all about ramp right and so making sure that we're judging appropriately based on whether we are the avatar for the ad also carries weight so I'm going to give this um I'm going to give this an A so the next ad is Jeep longest thing we ever do is live our lives but life doesn't come with an owner's manual might have been nice huh but that means we get to write our own stories freedom is yes or no or maybe freedom is for everybody but it isn't free it's earned there are real heroes in the world but not the ones in the [Music] movies real heroes are humble they're not driven by pride pride is a terrible driver freedom is the roar one man's engine and the Silence of anothers freedom is the ability to inspire the most sacred thing in life isn't the path it's the freedom to choose it you don't have to be friends with someone to wave at him we won't always agree on which way to go but our differences can be our strength so choose but Choose Wisely choose what makes you happy my friends my family my work make me happy this Jeep makes me happy even though my name is that's my owner's manual how long was his get out there write your own is that whole thing I was like that was super long did they run that whole thing so if Jeep ran a 2minute ad or 2 and a half minute ad then they spent whatever 8 Time 5 which is a lot of of eight time fives right when you're counting in millions okay what I want to do is actually show you what happened in this ad because this is uh this is branding and now there there was such a clear equation that they use that I want to break it down for you so they said Jeep equals Freedom this is literally as clear as day Association as you can make then they said freedom is stuff our demo likes if you like these things you like Jeep and then they just hit thing after thing after thing after thing after thing to be purposeful to curate the associations that they wanted to make with Jeep notice they didn't say Jeep starting at 13 financed for 68 months and 0% APR whatever they didn't do any of that this was a pure brand-based ad there's obviously product placement inside of it which is fine we're trying to reinforce the brand I would say that they're very very specific about the avatars that they're trying to attract and so I would bet you that the things that they chose in terms of the stuff they liked are things that they know from customer research cuz if you're just drop $ 40 million on an ad or whatever they spent the customer research they did I'll bet you they picked the words and things that they knew their demo like now if you watch this I can tell you that this is probably not targeted at women I can probably also tell you that this is going to lean to a more conservative crowd I can tell you this is probably people who are more Pro military when you're thinking about this like he said Freedom isn't free that's more commonly a a right leaning narrative they probably know their Avatar is more right leaning they know their Avatar and so they made a clear equal sign in terms of what they're about if you like Freedom you'll like Jeep and freedom is all of these things that you like so like Jeep basically and I do think the little quip at the end with Harrison Ford was nice um about it being his last name a little bit of a shot across the bow but fundamentally this is pure brand I think this is a good ad I wouldn't say it's the Google ad I would say it's an a tier was a good ad all right next ad is hin and hers obesity is America's deadliest epidemic this is America 74% of us are overweight and obesity leads to half a million deaths each year why you just have to stop eating Jimmy this is America something's broken and it's not our bodies it's the system welcome to weight loss in America like And subscribe a60 billion industry that feeds on our failure they're medications that work but they're price for profits not patients this is America this system wasn't built to help us it was built to keep us sick and stuck but not anymore him and hers offers life-changing weight loss medications they're affordable doctor trusted and formulated in the USA you get a treatment plan designed by a doctor to fit your body goals and lifestyle you deserve to feel great in your body this is the future of healthcare this is him and hers join us in the fight for a healthier America initial impression uh it's definitely visually jarring obviously because you've got a big stomach that just flaps and you've got weight it's so it's basically a very fear-based hook what was interesting to me is that I've never seen hims and hers as healthc care which is what they said so I don't know if they're trying to shift their brand and that was kind of the goal that they had with this particular ad it did feel a little bit I don't know if to say disingenuous but basically they were like all these medic medications are meant for profit and then they're like take our medication and so that felt very like pandering it just I probably wouldn't have been that strategy so by and large this is a branding based ad but I think this serves as a perfect ju deposition between the Jeep ad which I think was a really excellent ad from a branding perspective and this ad which I don't think hit the mark for me also I didn't see any dream outcome the Jeep ad talks about what people want they want freedom and they they demonstrate Freedom visually in a lot of you know freedom-based occasions here I see a lot of over people now maybe if you're an overweight person you would say oh this that is for me but I don't know how many like they're thin and all of the people who are taking their stuff are not there's a lot of little things that I I wasn't the biggest fan of but I think they would want to also demonstrate that like it works for people who are not overweight but cuz they also do like hair replacement I think they do they do a bunch of other things besides weight loss but maybe glp1 products are just crushing it for them that being said I to to me this was the worst ad I think what was the one that we had at C tier booking yeah I think this one's worse than that um I'll put that as a d cuz the the question we have to ask ourselves is does an overweight person let's just say that they're trying to make themselves more accessible for you know overweight people so then we asked the question okay would it overweight people like well they had a lot of stuff they didn't like but they didn't show a lot of stuff that they did and then they also branded themselves as Healthcare which maybe there's a strategy around that but I think most overweight people hate thinking about how they have health care and like they're sick and fat and all this stuff I will say I'm limited cuz I've never been overweight and so I don't know but yeah my initial impression was not like Yay this is really compelling all right ad seven is on that's a slice oh MrRoger Federer why does it say q and C on your shoes that's an o and n for on um hm well you know Elma knows his alphabet and and does definitely a Q and A C trust me Elma it's it's on okay but you know Elmo loves you MrRoger Federer even if you don't know your alphabet yet looks like on right yeah roer I can already tell you what my score is on this one to me it's a c I'll tell you why I think it's a c like I would say the the one before this was I had a bad aftertaste from the last ad this one is just like it has nothing to do with anything besides you have a celebrity endorsement and they're just talking about the letters of the name of the company is this a branding ad right so does it make associations that our target audience like now they might like Federer but the subject matter they're talking about is just like the name of the company and I think they made this ad all about them rather than making all about the customer and I think that's where they missed so I think they just forgot like rule number one is that like no one cares about you they just care about themselves and so I think they they missed the mark there I would say that it wasn't distasteful but I put it as a c at eight Go Daddy let's rip it actors we have the power to convince the world we know what we're doing when in fact we do not I can make you believe I'm a detective without ever stepping foot in an actual crime scene these symbols probably symbolize something astronaut nope Houston I'm observing some debris coming from Uranus am I hardest rooll yet small business owner because I have no idea what I'm doing the GoDaddy Arrow does using AI to build a logo website and social content so I can start Walton goggin's goggle glasses because if your goggles ain't goggin they don't belong on your Noggin with GoDaddy Arrow it's like you know what you're doing so this one I first off I didn't really enjoy the call out cuz it had actors as like almost the call out so to me that like I'm like well that immediately I'm like this doesn't apply to me and then it takes like 2third of the ad of just kind of like demonstrating not knowing what you're doing but really not knowing where it's going at all and then at the very end it's like oh it's GoDaddy which is a hosting site that can help you build your your website with AI I would have just liked real world business owners not knowing how to do many other things and then having this be the one thing that they had figured out how to do right I would have loved to seen like a a a before after with this being like three four five things in a row that a business owner doesn't know how to do insert new amazing thing the GoDaddy hosting and then now they revisit the old things and they can do 1 2 3 4 5 and then recap CTA I think that would have been a far more effective ad and I think the more emotive those five things were the more compelling the ad would have been right so it's like how do I pay payroll like that would be like an interesting thing right now of course you're not going to build a payroll website but there this is me thinking off the top of my head but like there are elements there that you could probably take of business owners like it' probably be like answer my phone the email because they do all of these things on the site so I probably think through each of those elements and just show before born after I'm going to put this in the uh I'm going to put this in the C category I wasn't a huge fan as a as a business owner I wasn't like super compelled also random but like I don't know if small business owners at all care about how actors pretend to know what they're doing and I don't know if you think about this from repairing perspective what they did was they compared actors and small business owners and they equated the two and I think most small business owners probably wouldn't want to call themselves actors now they might have done some research to figure out like look like you know what you're doing and I'll bet you that phrase might convert um but I think they might have taken like a creative team might have taken like who else acts like they know what they're doing actors and I just think that was probably the Miss personally yeah and I'll be clear I think there were a couple elements of humor I think that Noggin and goggin thing was funny I think uh I think the second frame where he did something I thought was kind of cute but while I was watching I like what are we talking about here and so the thing is it has to keep your attention and it it didn't really keep my attention cuz I didn't know like what this is about and this was the only ad we've watched so far far that I had to rewatch to try and understand and if that's what a lot of people had to do then they're just never going to re-watch it and like the moment's gone all right ad n instacart let's shoot it release the hounds Mony baby [Music] I'm on a p this the way we take to the groceries are here thanks babe you get the milk I think we're going to have our first B it's just mid I'll tell you what I think they did well I'll tell you things I didn't I didn't like so I think them showing the actual end result of using the product which is groceries delivered immediately and then her having to go get the cow I think that was the most compelling part of the ad the last like four or five seconds which is good cuz at least it's close to the CTA or at least is at least telling you what the company's about in terms of the the actual ad itself now they probably they might have been able to do some sort of co-op with a lot of these Brands because they're getting you know ads so they might have all chipped in to to do this because think about like this if they help instacart instacart is a distributor of their products and so if they help advertise instacart then it increases the likely that people use instacart to purchase these things so I'll bet you that these specific products will probably see an uptick among instacart users that being said it took me a little bit more than a half second to figure out like what this is about and I also try to think about this from the perspective of somebody who doesn't know what instacart is I know what instacart is but if you don't know what instacart is you're like what the hell is this thing I like a more tactical uh experience for a customer or a prospect to understand what problem this solves I think that's why I think the last 5 Seconds was compelling like oh you forgot milk then you know Rush ordering the milk that was probably the most Salient use case in the ad and so if you have the opportunity to demonstrate that within your own advertising the problem and then the immediate solution being your product I see that as a good thing but I think the first you know 70% 80% of the ad could have been better I like the last five or six seconds so I'll put that as a b all right add 10 nardis breast cancer screening I see you again [Music] at at look at that you get lift you get height you get power your attention please still the show show how you know I'm going to keep on dancing so you can keep on gling it ain't my fault that I was made this way [Music] really let's start paying attention to breasts when it matters the most early detection for breast cancer is a game changer and why I'm able to be here today so let's get more women screen than ever before go to your attention please.
com and take the first step big picture obviously grabbed attention I mean I I would say 10 out of 10 on the attention grabbing right like that's evolutionary and so they obviously demonstrate that the whole way through I think that's good they show some pop culture references they show some influencers in there show some actors all that stuff gains attention I'll bet you people were watching this whole thing uh all the way through like I was glued calm down um but you know the tone shift at the end I think basically you have a testimonial which is fundamentally what that is and I do think there's a decent Jos with the with the text there I want to give this a B+ I don't think it's an A but I think it's a B+ I think it was it was an above average ad so they had you know their main point and then they had a CTA at the end I would say the urgencies implied with the fact that like you could have something over 6 million people have this bad thing happen don't be one of them is kind of the implied messaging and I think that's good I mean you could model that ad structure for just about any business basically tons of attention fact that Mak someone uncomfortable testimonial of somebody who avoided it using the service CTA like that's fundamentally we just went through the only lingering question that I have is like it was so fun I wonder if it it leaves you feeling good not feeling like I should go and get my breast screening and so I think that it's like this is something that may get positive accolades obviously cuz who's going to on a breast cancer ad but from a purely advertising perspective the point of advertising is obviously let people know about your stuff but the point of persuasion is to change Behavior right and so I think my larger question is like how many people actually go through with it as a result of this ad compared to maybe an ad that could have been like I think if they had done like the Google Gemini version ad of this where it was like all the moments you're going to miss out on life like probably would have been more compelling second maybe like the Jeep version of like you know boobs are Freedom like free the tatas but then all of a sudden it you know it transitions here's all the things that boobs are great for but then it's just like somebody on a ventilator I think that would have been more compelling to get people to like change Behavior so I will put it as a as a be next one Nike let's hit it you can't be demanding you can't be relentless you can't put yourself first so put yourself first you can't be confident so be confident you can't challenge so challenge you can't dominate so dominating you can't Flex so Flex you can't fill a stadium so fill that Stadium you can't be emotional so be emotional you can't take credit you can't speak up you can't be so ambitious can't break records can't have any fun make demands can't keep scor you can't stand out whatever you do you can't win so when well you know I'm going to be a fan of uh anything that has just win so that's that's Alex's life motto more so that all the difficulties that you go through can be Rewritten with a W you know I'm a big fan of winners right history including your own if you lived your entire life suffering and then at the very end you accomplished what you wanted I think that it would change the entire narrative there's a great story that I heard of a guy who was objectively a failure and they just name all the failures this guy had and the one thing he had is he wrote this little song called Jingle Bells and so like failed musician failed at everything but it's like he won you know what I mean it's like if all of that was in order to have this one Timeless thing that ended up you impacting millions of lives over over the course of history to me that sounds like a w so anyways I'm a fan of Nike's kind of reemergence their new Direction uh this is obviously a branding at their whole brand is so wide in terms of products they sell and they demonstrate the products across lots of different sports here they're associating with each of the people in there each of the Champions objectively like they sign goats they sign people who many consider always the best in the world and sometimes the best of all time and so they're associating their brand with these people whom you like and they're wearing the product and demonstrating what it looks like to win I would say this is a really solid ad obviously targeted at women um since it's all female I'll say this this isn't my favorite Nike ad I'm also not a woman I'll give this an a you got to put your hat on for associations they're saying Nike equals winning and Nike equals doing what people told you you can't do and I think that they would probably want those two associations and Nike equals all of these great ladies that you like and that you admire and look up to therefore to approximate your uh proximity to them you then buy their product to feel that way when you put it on so I think I think it was a successful you know branding Market and they're some of the best marketers I mean if you think about it as a brand perspective I think Nike is one of the Premier in terms of their understanding of of building brand but I'm very happy that they have come back and talked about winning again because uh I think they were touched with a touch of the the wokeism for a minute there and I'm just glad they came back to reality Nike is the the I think is the Roman word for the goddess of Victory if you're going to be a brand built on winning it means there has to be losers you can't say that everybody's a winner and then also have a brand that's about winning cuz if everybody's a winner no one is that is a quote from Flash from The Incredibles the cartoon all right next up rocket morgage this should be interesting let's get you [Music] home West Virginia [Music] blid river life is all there older than the trees younger than the mountains like a yeah can't wa to get there man country home to [Applause] the m baby home Country Road Take Me Home Country Road super good ad so they they have basically I would say a combination of like three quarters Google Gemini 25% Jeep and just made it and so fundamentally let's let's let's walk through the associations here right I would say this is an A+ but not s tier and I'll explain why so let's just walk through the associations really quickly so they have what I would call uh Humanity human moments that many people associate with and/ Americana all right which is just basically the American ethos and so they basically have this big they they basically build this huge storyboard of of the American ethos right the American dream they talk about the military going home different parts of the US different Subs segments they clearly lean a little bit more in the direction of first-time homeowners at least that's what I read you know when I when I look at this ad I think mostly firsttime homeowners now they may find out that getting them getting first-time homeowners then creates the lifetime value of the customer so that might have been deliberate I don't know the only knock I have on this ad is that the CTA was so short at the end that I didn't know whose ad it was so basically it's like they they basically spent the whole time listing all the things that were amazing that i'm like I agree with all of this in the last like 1 second just it says rocket. com on the screen and I have to be paying attention to know rocket.
