Michael Cera has plenty to smile about following his CeraVe Super Bowl campaign.
Let the Monday morning quarterbacking begin.
There was much to like about Super Bowl LVIII’s batch of commercials—with its variety of flavors, tones and styles—but which ones really rose to the top? You can dig into Ad Age’s reviews of every Big Game ad. In the meantime, below are our choices for the Top 5.
Sure, this ad was polarizing, but we loved every second of it. It plays like a parody of slapstick Super Bowl humor taken to extremes. Plus, there’s so much fun stuff going on in every scene—and the product gets plenty of love, too. For us, this spot was a major “Yeeeeeeesss!”
Google continued its legacy of touching Super Bowl spots with “Javier in Frame,” one of the most visually interesting commercials of the night. Directed by blind filmmaker Adam Morse, the 60-second spot highlighted the Google Pixel 8 smartphone’s Guided Frame feature, while also telling a moving family story. For those who love heartwarming Super Bowl fare, this was an A+.
The sheer definition of spectacle, Verizon’s tightly guarded Super Bowl spot exploded in the third quarter with the fun concept “Beyoncé breaks the internet, but can she break Verizon?” The vignettes, from “Beyonc-AI” to “BarBey” to “BOTUS,” are all delightful, with the pop star admirably embracing the escalating silliness—and Tony Hale the ideal sidekick. The music drop was the perfect mic drop, too.
The celeb pileups you see in a lot of Super Bowl commercials often overcompensate for the lack of an idea. But with this Dunkin’ spot, it’s the opposite. Ben Affleck, Jack Harlow, Jennifer Lopez, Matt Damon and Tom Brady all have clear and amusing roles to play as Dunkin’ extended the gag (introduced on the Grammys) of Affleck trying to be a pop star. The whole campaign is a fantastic example of self-deprecating humor that punctures the celebrity veneer.
This campaign took a years-old meme—that Michael Cera might be involved in skincare brand CeraVe—and entertainingly brought it to life. The in-game commercial is really inseparable from the long build-up on social, which masterfully piqued everyone’s interest before the hilarious video teaser broke. The in-game spot then put the perfect cap on things. A silly, smart, very modern campaign executed flawlessly.
