Before New Year's Eve, a Look at 15 Super Bowl Ads: America's "Spring Festival Gala"

They Say Super Bowl Viewers Come in Two Kinds: Those Who Watch the Game, and Those Who Watch the Ads

In the US, the NFL's annual championship game, the Super Bowl, draws every bit as much excitement as China's "Spring Festival Gala." Since 2006, Super Bowl viewership has set a new record almost every year. Last year's game drew an average of 114 million viewers, peaking at 120 million. In other words, of all Americans watching television at that hour, 74 in every 100 were watching the Super Bowl.

So you can imagine that Super Bowl ads are as valuable as the ones slotted into the middle of the Spring Festival Gala. In 2016, a 30-second Super Bowl spot sold for as much as US$5 million. With an audience that large and that much money at stake, advertisers don't dare cut corners on creativity or style. Over the years, Super Bowl ads have become an attraction in their own right, apart from the game. The year's most popular ads on YouTube are often Super Bowl regulars.

This year's Super Bowl will be played on February 7, US local time, which is Lunar New Year's Day for us. To build buzz, though, Super Bowl ads usually come out early. So before New Year's Eve, let's take a look at other people's "Spring Festival Gala" ads. (Click here for last year's roundup of Super Bowl ads.)

1. Bud Light: Vote for the "Bud Light Party"

Budweiser, the Super Bowl's biggest-spending regular, bought three minutes of airtime this year: one ad for Bud Light and two for Budweiser. On creativity, the Bud Light ad comes out slightly ahead.

This year Budweiser drops its usual heartwarming animals and talks politics instead. In the spot, comedians Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer campaign hard for the "Bud Light Party," cashing in on the excitement of this year's US presidential election. Under pressure from craft beer, Budweiser has lost ground. In 2015, Bud Light ranked third in global market share at 2.5%, behind Snow and Tsingtao. Its US share is slipping too: 19% in 2010, but only 17.5% by 2014. To reverse the decline, Budweiser has had to pour money into marketing and advertising.

2. Snickers: Eat a Snickers When You're Hungry and You Turn Into... Marilyn Monroe

Snickers sticks with its "You're not you when you're hungry" theme, this time casting the actor Willem Dafoe as Marilyn Monroe in drag. Last year's Snickers Super Bowl ad used 3D simulation and facial recognition technology to recreate the classic American sitcom The Brady Bunch, and it went over well. So this year Snickers recreates another classic: Monroe's famous billowing-skirt scene from The Seven Year Itch. After a bite of Snickers, Willem instantly turns into a sweet Monroe.

Snickers has always found new ways to sell hunger. It once released packaging printed with 21 hunger symptoms, telling people that symptoms such as acting like "a princess" or being "stupid" can be cured with a Snickers bar. It also searched all of New York for "mistakes" and stuck notes next to them: you made a mistake because you're hungry, have a Snickers. Recently Snickers China recruited Jiang Xin, famous for playing "Concubine Hua," to play a "fussy, hungry glutton," and that went over fairly well too.

3. Audi: Drive an Audi and Fly Like a "Starman"

Besides a good idea, Audi's Super Bowl ad has a great soundtrack: "Starman" by the rock musician David Bowie, who died last month. An aging astronaut misses the days of his youth in a space capsule, and the 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus makes him feel he is in space again. The car tears along a mountain road to the classic "Starman," and it's a real thrill.

Although Volkswagen Group has been hit hard by its emissions scandal, Audi has escaped largely unscathed. In 2015, Audi's global sales passed 1.8 million, up 3.6% year on year. Its sales rose 5.7% in Europe and 11.1% in the US in 2015. Sales in China fell 1.4% year on year, but Audi is still China's best-selling luxury car brand, with nearly a third of luxury car sales.

4. Honda: Quick Learners, the Sheep in the Truck Bed Can Sing

Honda brought a flock of singing sheep this year. Like a choir, some take the high notes and some sing harmony, and they sound great. It turns out the sheep learned to sing in the bed of a Honda Ridgeline. The all-new Ridgeline pickup adds a truck-bed audio system with six speakers, so it would be hard for the sheep not to sing. The Ridgeline was shown at the North American International Auto Show not long ago and is meant to help Honda win back its pickup business.

Honda again made this ad with the creative agency RPA. Their work together is worth watching, such as the ad we covered earlier in which a hole opens in a man's head and a car drives out of it, and the short film Paper, which tells Honda's history in 3,000 hand-drawn illustrations.

5. Avocados From Mexico: Oddly Shaped Aliens at the "Earth Museum"

After its first Super Bowl ad last year, the trade association Avocados From Mexico is back with a second. Many years from now, a group of strangely colored, oddly shaped aliens visit a museum of Earth. They are fascinated by the exhibits from our planet, such as that dress nobody could agree was blue and white or black and gold, and the little faces called emojis. But the museum's star exhibit, the "Mexican avocado tree," clearly draws them most, and after eating avocados the aliens beam with exaggerated satisfaction.

Americans have a special love for avocados. In 2014, avocado consumption reached 4.25 billion, four times the 2000 figure. Although AFM was founded in the US only three years ago, it already holds more than 60% of the avocado market. In recent years avocados have caught on in China too: imports grew 127-fold in the four years from 2011 (31,800 kilograms) to 2014 (4.07 million kilograms).

6. Doritos: Three Puppies Go to the Supermarket for Chips

Every year Doritos holds a "Crash the Super Bowl" contest for its Super Bowl ad. This year's ad was picked from 4,500 entries from contestants in 28 countries. The contest has now reached its tenth year, and its last. The winner goes for cute pets: a few dogs, tempted by Doritos on a supermarket shelf, go to great lengths to disguise themselves as a human.

Over the past 10 years, 21 consumer-made Doritos ads have aired during the Super Bowl, and they have been well received. In the market, Doritos is the best-selling chip brand in the US, with 2015 sales of 1.35 billion, more than double those of the runner-up, Tostitos.

7. Mountain Dew: A Puppy, a Monkey and a Baby in One Strange Creature

Mountain Dew, a PepsiCo drink brand, went for goofy nonsense this time. They say Super Bowl ads have three sure bets: puppies, monkeys and babies. So Mountain Dew rolled all three into one creature, and the Puppy Monkey Baby was born.

Besides the Doritos and Mountain Dew ads, PepsiCo is also sponsoring this year's halftime show, bringing in Coldplay and Beyoncé.

8. Hyundai: A Spokesman in Many Roles and a Hungry, Frustrated Bear

Hyundai is running two ads during this Super Bowl. The first promotes the 2017 Hyundai Elantra. The fun part is that its spokesman, Ryan Reynolds, appears again and again, playing more than 10 roles himself. Two women in a Hyundai are so busy staring at Ryan that they would have crashed, if not for the Elantra's automatic emergency braking.

The second ad is more nerve-racking. It opens with a man and a woman being chased through the woods by a brown bear, but the bear doesn't get them: the Elantra's remote voice start saves them, even if the man's "start my car" comes out a little off-key.

South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group kept growing in North America and Europe in 2015, with sales up 6.3% and 9.9% respectively. But its sales in China fell 7%. And according to its financial report, Hyundai Motor's net profit for fiscal 2015 fell 15% from the year before, the third straight year of falling profit. Even so, Hyundai is still spending big on advertising: besides these two in-game ads, it also bought two spots in the pregame warm-up.

9. Heinz: "Real Hot Dogs" and "Fake Ketchup"

Heinz, the world's largest ketchup maker, has made a lovable Super Bowl ad. A pack of puppies play real "hot dogs," racing across a meadow toward their beloved "ketchup." The "hot dogs" pounce on the "ketchups" and lick them all over, a cleverly offbeat way of saying Heinz ketchup is good.

This is Heinz's third Super Bowl, and its earlier ads were also about ketchup. But Heinz believes consumers know ketchup in general without realizing that Heinz ketchup comes in many packages and flavors. So the new ad dresses actors in all kinds of packaging costumes to show off the whole ketchup family.

10. LG: What Will the Future Look Like?

This is LG's first Super Bowl, and it is promoting its OLED televisions. The ad stars the famous actor Liam Neeson as a "man from the future." It was directed by Jake Scott, who made the hugely popular Super Bowl ads Puppy Love and Lost Dog. The future world in the ad seems to be built from countless walls that look like OLED panels, which gives it a blockbuster feel.

LG's total sales and profit in 2015 were US$48.8 billion and US$1 billion, down from US$50.1 billion and US$1.58 billion in 2014. On the bright side, LG's OLED TV sales rose in the fourth quarter of 2015, and LG is still expanding OLED TV production. LG says it will keep expanding its marketing in 2016 to win more people over to its new OLED TVs.

11. GoPro: A GoPro Ad Has to Be Shot With a GoPro, of Course

GoPro, which has been struggling, has also decided to use the Super Bowl to lift sales. From skiing to mountain climbing, from football games to playground slides, the ad shows what the world looks like through a GoPro Hero4, reportedly using some footage shot by users.

GoPro had a disappointing 2015. The new Hero4 camera launched at US$400, and after two price cuts it now sells for under US$200, yet sales still haven't taken off. Perhaps the Super Bowl will give GoPro's dismal sales a little hope.

12. PayPal: Redefining "New Money"

Since splitting from eBay last July, PayPal is on the Super Bowl for the first time, trying to "reintroduce" itself to users. In the usual view, Old Money means the traditional aristocracy, while New Money is more pejorative, usually meaning uncultured upstarts. In this ad themed around "New Money," PayPal tries to redefine the term. The company, whose main business is payments, claims to stand for New Money: a new way of spending, paying and managing money.

PayPal had a strong 2015, with full-year revenue of US$9.2 billion, up 17% year on year, and net profit of US$1.23 billion, up 193%.

13. Pokémon: In the Game and in Real Life, Keep Training and Leveling Up

This year is Pokémon's 20th anniversary, so Pokémon is on the Super Bowl for the first time to celebrate its birthday. Pikachu doesn't appear until the very end; the first half shows the game and reality blending together through a child's eyes. Set to the rousing theme "Train On," it suggests that in the game and in real life alike, you have to keep training and leveling up.

Pokémon has also lined up a series of celebrations for its 20th birthday, including all sorts of new merchandise, such as limited-edition red, yellow and blue Pokémon-themed Nintendo 3DS consoles, plus shirts, mugs and more.

14. MINI: Tearing Off the Labels

Back on the Super Bowl after four years, MINI wants to tear off the labels stuck on it. In this ad themed "Defy Labels," MINI brings in tennis star Serena Williams, former US women's soccer captain Abby Wambach and others to "define" MINI. They keep sticking labels on the car, and the closing line reads like a declaration: "This car doesn't care how you define it."

Because its cars look so distinctive, many people hold stereotypes about MINI and think it's only for certain kinds of people. So MINI teamed up with Serena Williams and other celebrities who are also easily labeled to push back. Before releasing the Super Bowl ad, MINI also shot warm-up interviews with Williams and the others, which you can watch by clicking the yellow link.

15. Wix.com: Even the Noodle Shop in Kung Fu Panda Needs a Website

Wix.com, a do-it-yourself website builder that started in Israel, is on the Super Bowl for the second time. The company may not sound famous, but its business is doing fairly well: it has more than 72 million registered users, and last quarter's revenue reached US$536 million.

This year Wix.com teamed up with Kung Fu Panda 3, now in theaters. In the ad, Po tries all sorts of ways to advertise Mr. Ping's noodle shop, and in the end they decide that building a website with Wix works better. It's a fun ad, and it also spoofs Old Spice's earlier viral hit, "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like."

Finally, a little warm-up of our own. This year's Super Bowl is the 50th, and the event we have long called America's "Spring Festival Gala" happens to clash with our own Spring Festival Gala. So we have prepared two more articles. One tells how the Super Bowl became part of mainstream American sports consumer culture, shaping the lives of ordinary Americans and becoming the most successful commercial sporting event in the world. The other is about the contest between advertisers at America's "Spring Festival Gala" and China's (no spoilers). They will be published on Lunar New Year's Day and the second day of the new year, so stay tuned.

(Intern reporter Xie Yuchengyang also contributed to this article.)

Cover image from Google