Super Bowl Alert: Usher is everywhere and Bud Light goes for laughs

Ad Age is counting down to Super Bowl LVIII. In the days leading up to the game, which will air on CBS on Feb. 11, Ad Age will bring you breaking news, analysis and first looks at the high-stakes, Big Game commercials—all in our Super Bowl newsletter. Sign up right here to get them via email. The home stretch The Big Game is five days away and 26 ads have already been released, equaling more than one-third of the total inventory. The latest releases come from Mtn Dew, which shows a deadpan Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman “having a Blast” while drinking Mtn Dew Baja Blast; Bud Light, which has returned to over-the-top humor with a new “Genie” character; Popeyes, which unfreezes Ken Jeong to plug its new wings; Uber Eats, which has a forgetful Jennifer Aniston running into David Schwimmer; and M&M’s, whose ode to stars who could not win the big one includes Scarlett Johansson and Dan Marino. To keep track of all the advertisers running national spots in the game, and their teasers, bookmark Ad Age’s regularly updated Super Bowl ad chart. Yeah!—that’s Usher The singer won’t just perform at halftime—he’ll appear in at least two ads referencing the performance. One is from BMW, where Usher encounters Christopher Walken; and the other is from Uber Eats, where he plays into the brand’s forgetfulness shtick. It’s been a big week for the singer, who was also announced as the face of a new menswear campaign for Kim Kardashian’s Skims brand. The brand will make available on its website an exclusive limited-edition release of his forthcoming album, Variety reports. But wait, there’s more—Usher has also teamed up with the NFL on a capsule collection of Super Bowl LVIII merchandise. For more on teasers and other pigskin marketing news, check out our Super Bowl chart. How much? The figure most often quoted for the price of a 30-second in-game spot in this year’s game has been $7 million. But now we have an exact figure, courtesy of Guideline, which tracks media buys based on data from six major U.S. agency holding companies and leading independent agencies. It found that the equivalized price for 30 seconds of ad time in the game to be $6.47 million, up 11% from last year’s $5.83 million, noting that “specific spots may fluctuate above or below that figure, including those leveraging legacy rates.” Guideline found the food category to have the most spots this year, while entertainment was No. 1 last year. Candy and sweets brand account for a lot of that. Also read: 8 Super Bowl ad trends to watch The Swift bounce Plenty of brands jumped on the Taylor Swift bandwagon Sunday after she won two Grammy Awards and announced her new album, including Drumstick, Duolingo and Sour Patch Kids. But it all could just be a warm-up for Super Bowl Sunday as buzz continues to build on if and how she will show up in Vegas after performing a concert in Japan to watch boyfriend Travis Kelce play. As the game gets closer, the Swift-related content from brands “is just going to continue to grow,” Ariel Sims, head of paid social at agency Digitas, told Ad Age, “and it will get to a point we haven’t seen previously from any of the other Super Bowls.” Domino’s, for one, revealed today that from now until the Big Game, it would be offering a limited-time coupon code, 1387, inspired by Swift’s favorite number and Kelce’s jersey number. Swift has already delivered a boost to NFL ratings, but how much the Super Bowl audience will grow (the game drew 115 million viewers last year) remains to be seen. A poll today released by Numerator shows that most consumers (79%) say an appearance by Swift would not impact their likelihood of watching the game, but 12% of consumers say it would, with that figure jumping to 20% for Gen Z and millennial consumers. There’s always next year United Airlines is making a local appeal to viewers who might be sick of the Chiefs and burned out on the 49ers. The airline bought regional Super Bowl ad time in the Chicago, Cleveland, Denver and Houston markets with an ad starring “Friday Night Lights” actor Kyle Chandler trying to lend hope to fans of the teams in those cities. For long-suffering Bears fans, for instance, Chandler offers this: “It starts with the draft, then you build.” Of course, the airline is not ignoring Kansas City—in a spot running in that market, Chandler tells Chiefs fans, “When you try to get here again, and they tell you no one’s that lucky, you know this isn’t about luck.”

Super Bowl Alert: Usher is everywhere and Bud Light goes for laughs

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