Tag: Cheerios

More Ball, Less Boobs: SMNTKS Super Bowl Ad Review

Getting those snacks ready for tomorrow?  Don’t forget your pad and pencil for scoring a full card of million-dollar commercials.  Make sure you are the master of water cooler chat with this smntks primer on the slate of ads.  What’s going to be hot?

Puppies!!

Yup, soft, fuzzy bouncy bundles of joy–everybody loves ’em, even big boy advertiser Budweiser who will feature a sweet, sweet blonde golden retriever for family friendly brand buzz without the typical T and A you might expect from the Super Bowl.  With an increase in customer push back on inappropriate ads, puppies are as safe as blue chip stock.  Budweiser’s already enjoyed lots of pre game buzz with this ad, and with the cute butt in this ad it’s sure to get shared long after the game is done.

Super First Timers

Several advertisers from brand new and old will be making their first appearance at the big game.  Cheerios, covered here, and Heinz make their first appearance despite over century combined in business and newbie tech company Squarespace will join them with a horror-themed spot that will make you rethink browsing.

Drives off the Field

Eating up lots of commercial time, car companies will be wowing us with adventures thrilling and bizarre.  Volkswagen’s angels, Jaguar’s spies, Hyundai’s super dad and the muppets all make a play for car lovers’ cache.

Whole Lotta Love

There are fewer super sexual ads, but that doesn’t mean love is off limits.  Axe, Chobani and Chevy all rev up the love meter.  Don’t expect any kind of rom-com you’re used to.  Dictator’s gone lovestruck, yogurt stains and a bull in the mood for love make these ads more funny or strange than flirty.

Without a fratboy’s-eye-view of the ladies scheduled for tomorrow, smntks is looking forward to some good football.  And the ads–are you likely to surface from the Super Bowl with a shopping list?  Probably not–these big day ads are all about growing our warm fuzzy feelings for featured brands.  Don’t expect the hard sell with tomorrow’s ads, but with all the money and eyeballs, you’ll definitely have some ads worth talking about for your Monday morning quarterbacking.

Cheerios Graces Superbowl With Interracial Family’s Return

Sunday’s Super Bowl is here!  If you can’t decide between the Seahawks and the Broncos then you’re probably one of millions of Americans that tune in to the big game to see the commercials.  The Super Bowl is the single biggest draw for advertisers all year.  With a $4 million price tag for every 30 seconds, all the advertisers are going to want the biggest bang for their buck.  Cheerios is making their first Super Bowl ad debut in the 48 year history of the game.

This spot, entitled Gracie is a follow up starring the interracial family from this summer’s spot, discussed right here on smntks.  So when General Mills finally decides to pony up the $133,000 per second for an ad on the big day, they choose to feature a family that created more controversy than any other Cheerios pitchman.  What gives?

stah130604

What gives is that Gracie and her interracial TV Mom and Pop turn out to be good business.  When Gracie first appeared in the summer, trolls tweeted out a host of hateful comments about the ad and interracial families in general.  That would have been  a sad end to the story, but haters weren’t the only ones that took to the web.

o-GRACE-COLBERT-CHEERIOS-facebook

Many more thousands of people weighed in with their support for the positive representation of interracial families.  Cheerios themselves celebrates We are the 15% , a real world group formed in support of families like Gracie’s own fictitious folks.  Social media and mainstream talk also weighed in to support what is increasingly a portion of the continuum of normal families in America.  The moral of this story?  The changing face of America has a place and space in mainstream media.

Gracie’s return to the airwaves should come as no surprise to her many supporters.  What is more interesting is that General Mills is willing to put 4 million cheerios front and center  Super Bowl Sunday to bet on the mass appeal of a multiracial household.    Running the ad on the biggest day of the year tells us that when all was said and done in the summer, customers responded positively to the representation of interracial families.

Is the Gracie series racist?  No. True, they are leveraging public support to improve their brand, but that’s all about green, not just black and white.  So Sunday, pour out a little salsa for Cheerios’ fan favorite fam.  And General Mills, since it’s working so well to show families stereotype free, maybe you could stop with the cool-ed up Nelly-Bee…or did you mean to play both sides?