[imagesource: Planters]

For a sport that’s only really played in one country, the Super Bowl does have a massive global reach.

That’s why advertisers fork out the big bucks to air their wares during the biggest match of all.

With the non-stop breaks in play, there are plenty of opportunities so we have a lot of options when it comes to the best and the worst ads from Super Bowl LVI (Super Bowl 56).

We’ll skip over those we have covered already and give you a few newbies.

Fast Company picked a couple of goodies that we also like:

IRISH SPRING “WELCOME TO IRISH SPRING

I like that it’s weird:

Ultimately, it’s a spot that is just weird enough to get your attention for a brand you haven’t seen since you had to shower at your grandparents’ place, and it provided the game with a much needed dose of actual WTF.

Anything that features a throwback to The Sopranos is in my good books. Slate with more on this Chevrolet ad and that infamous ending:

Did the Chevrolet ad that mirrored the Sopranos opening credits and featured Jamie-Lynn “Meadow Soprano” Sigler driving an all-electric Chevy Silverado take place within the official continuity of the show? I’m going to take a strong stand here and say that it’s Sopranos canon.

If so, the mystery is solved: Sigler’s hug with co-star Robert “A.J. Soprano” Iler does not look like the sad, deflated embrace of two kids whose dad got whacked. Tony lives!

There’s no use revisiting the final scene but we can enjoy the ad. It’s not riveting but it’s The Sopranos, come on…

Here’s one for all the Community fans. Joel McHale, Ken Jeong, and an argument about nuts for Planters:

Next up, ‘Uber Don’t Eats’ which CBS News reports went down a charm:

 That spot featured Jennifer Coolidge, Trevor Noah, Gwyneth Paltrow and Nick Braun from “Succession” as they tried to eat non-edible products like diapers and lightbulbs. The business school praised the ad for its strong branding and its clear message.

Trevor is absolutely rolling in it these days.

To complete our top five I have to go to Larry David, comedy genius and the ad for US cryptocurrency exchange FTX:

[The ad] sent him traveling through time, casting a skeptical eye on various inventions that altered the course of history, such as the wheel (David: “Eh … I don’t think so. This is a miss”) and the lightbulb (“Edison, can I be honest with you? It stinks”) and the portable music player (“You’ll always be looking for batteries!”).

It’s just Larry being Larry and that’s fine by me:

We promised you some of the misses as well, starting with BUDWEISER “A CLYDESDALE’S JOURNEY”:

Directed by Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao and made with agency VaynerMedia, this ad has Budweiser once again swinging for the barnyard fences with a heartwarming Clydes-tale. Problem is, there isn’t much of a story…

What we needed here was to form some kind of emotional connection with these two characters and their friendship….Here we get none of that, just a collection of images seemingly slapped together to make us go “Awwww” but with nothing beyond that.

Zhao won two Oscars for Nomadland, which is a masterpiece. This is not:

Let’s add Facebook’s Meta’s ad into the mix largely because social media is wrecking society and I hate the idea of a Metaverse:

It stars a discarded animatronic figure, far removed from its glory days in the house band of robots at a birthday-pizza restaurant, that dons a pair of VR goggles and finds new life—sans lower body for some reason—in Horizon Worlds, Meta’s VR platform. The clear implication is that Facebook’s metaverse will hasten the decline and fall of the outside world, and that we will flock to Meta’s garish virtual space to live out our days as crude cartoon torsos.

Good times ahead:

Salesforce’s ad, featuring a very recognisable face, received an F rating from the Kellogg School Super Bowl Advertising Review:

The Salesforce ad, for example, featured actor Matthew McConaughey as an astronaut who preaches that humanity should focus on improving life on Earth. The ad didn’t tie back to Salesforce until the very end of the commercial.

McConaughey seems like a nice guy so it’s an E in my eyes:

Okay, that’s enough from our side.

Just Google ‘Super Bowl best and worst ads’ if your appetite isn’t satiated.

[sources:fastcompany&slate&cbs]