The most super thing about the Super Bowl is arguably the entertainment factor of the commercials and the half-time performance (unless, of course, you are a diehard fan of the game). Let’s review some of the most notable highlights of Sunday night.
The victory of the Los Angeles Rams over the Cincinnati Bengals represented the win of Sean McVay as the youngest coach ever to win the Super Bowl championship. While there was a lot to celebrate in this victory, the incredibly hot weather made it difficult to keep all the attention on the game. The hottest reading at 3:30 pm, recorded at Hawthorne Airport, of 79 °F was close to the highest ever recorded in Inglewood, California.
The half-time performances sizzled things up even further, with a surprise appearance by 50 Cent whose upside-down rapping to “In Da Club” set the Internet ablaze with memes. The combined performance by other music stars Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, and Eminem paid homage to the hip hop genre, and the city of Inglewood and Los Angeles county. In the performance the centrepiece was Dr. Dre, who created the signature West Coast rapping style, impacting the careers of the other co-performers, notably Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar.
Then, there was the pumped-up introduction to the game by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who declared at the beginning: “Finally, the Super Bowl has come back to Los Angeles!” His magnetic personality and athletic physique and energy were the perfect fit for the event.
No Super Bowl review is complete without the exciting roundup of commercials that allow marketers to exhibit their prowess, creativity and smarts in big-budget, celebrity-studded features. This year, Chevy, Amazon and Hellmann’s ads were among the most notable ones. Chevy’s tribute to the show, The Sopranos, played out the opening scene differently. It provided an opportunity to showcase their new generation of vehicles to the younger generation of consumers.
Amazon’s ad is a humorous take on how ads are marketed on social media, seeming to appear in response to a person’s thoughts. Scarlett Johansson and her husband Colin Jost are seen battling embarrassing situations brought on by Alexa’s supposedly newfound capability to read minds, finally realizing it’s best for their marital bliss that Alexa can’t read minds.
Hellmann’s ad stars Pete Davidson, considered the Warren Beatty of today, getting hit by ex-linebacker Jerod Mayo to stop him from wasting mayo, despite Davidson’s claim that he was not wasting any of it. Perhaps it is more of a reference to Mayo’s jealousy toward Davidson receiving attention from the hottest women on the planet.
Arslan Ahmed | Assistant Editor
