Top 10 Postmodern Super Bowl Commercials

Vice, RFK, and so many Amazon jobs📈

Creatives in the ad industry love to worship The Craft, but when it comes to Super Bowl commercials, the most celebrated among our tribe (based on vibes, but also maybe facts) tend to be Postmodern Commercials. By “postmodern,” I mean ads that break the rules—whether by subverting advertising tropes, leaning into absurdity or surrealism, or going full meta with self-aware storytelling.

If you can watch Super Bowl ads without overanalyzing them, congratulations on your healthy boundaries. But if you prefer to channel existential dread and childhood trauma into your career, here’s a chronological list of The Top 10 Postmodern Super Bowl Commercials to reframe the industry's biggest cultural moment.

1. MasterLock “Bullet” (1974)

   Agency Campbell Methun worked hard to convince MasterLock to take a risk on airing a commercial that was just an outrageous product demo: firing a bullet from a rifle into their product to show it would stayed locked. In a time of jingles and jolly voiceovers, there was nothing like this. MasterLock became a Super Bowl mainstay and the ad’s success propelled them to the top of their industry.

2. Apple “1984” (1984)

   Anyone who took Advertising 101 knows this Chiat/Day commercial, and it still holds up. But this ad isn’t iconic just because of its cinematic craft or what it did for Apple’s business, there was also nothing like it. This ad was a short film. It was cinema. Super Bowl viewers never saw anything like it. Also, it’s wild that this was just an expensive teaser with no product reveal. I’m curious if the “1984 won’t be like 1984” approach will be used by AI brands to ease our apocalyptic anxieties.

3. Energizer Bunny (1988)
   The reason I didn’t include “It’s a Tide Ad” in this list is because DDB and Energizer did it first, and did it simply. Viewers would see a commercial that felt traditional and followed the tropes of advertising, but as it was almost over the Energizer Bunny would appear and interrupt the ad. This is an example of a brilliant campaign through both execution and concept. The longer the mascot remains, the stronger the tie to the product’s long-lasting battery (this year Instacart is bringing back the bunny). The bunny’s Wikipedia page is worth a read if you want the story of how the Energizer Bunny was actually the “Sprint steals Verizon guy” of the 1980s.

   

   Courtesy of DDB, which after the merger we hope keeps going…and going…

4. E-Trade “Monkey” (2000)

   Even today, the best creative teams put on a Super Bowl pitch are going to have a few ideas about playing with the idea of how much the ads cost. But E-Trade did it best, way back in the last year of pre-decline American Empire.

5. Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” (2007-2016)

   Instead of making a Super Bowl commercial, Doritos creates a program to source Super Bowl commercials from the public. Now there are influencers to do this work. (If you’re a creative who got a career lift from this program, I’d love to talk to you about it!)

6. Oreo “You Can Still Dunk in the Dark” (2013)

   The Super Bowl idea that if you missed it, you’ve certainly seen it in one of the 239 creative portfolios who claim to have worked on it. This was the viral brand social media moment that changed the industry as social media managers were hired, war rooms were created and sold as agency selling points, brands started to loosen up to real-time approvals, the creators of that year’s actual Oreo commercial were probably furious, and everyone tried (and failed) to fully recapture the rush of that one line of copy: you can still dunk in the dark. It wasn’t even a great line, but it didn’t matter because it was a quickly written line. Unfortunately, I don’t think future generations will understand how fun this was.

7. Newcastle “If We Made It” (2014) & “Band of Brands” (2015)

   I’m cheating by adding two campaigns from Newcastle here, but they’re really the same idea with two executions: Newcastle can’t afford a Super Bowl commercial. Although concepts leaning on the cost had been happening since at least E-Trade in 2000, Newcastle’s execution was about as postmodern as you could get: showing the commercial they would have made, and getting other brand’s to co-sponsor their ad. It’s fun, but I do think this one will become more memorable to the industry than the public over time. Sorry Liquid Death, I loved Biggest Ad Ever, but Newcastle were the first innovators here.

8. Skittles “Exclusive the Rainbow” (2018)
   After Wu Tang made only one copy of their album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, it was inevitable that a brand would try something similar. Thankfully, the brand that did it, did it perfectly. Unlike the Wu Tang album which creates a sense of deep, frustrating FOMO for the public, nobody really cares about a commercial they can’t see. The David Schwimmer teasers were enough to get the idea of the exclusive commercial, but the real charm was that Skittles made the ad for one young Skittles super fan, and the public was able to watch his joyful reactions. Unlike Shaolin, I’d rather not ever see the commercial and instead let that little boy hold on to that moment his entire life.

9. Reddit “5-Second Ad” (2021)
   Clever idea, but even more clever because it was cheap to make.

10. Coinbase “Bouncing QR Code” (2022)

    Clever idea, but even more clever because it was cheap to make.

If you think I missed an important one, or want to debate me, the comments are open.

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• Portfolio of the Week: Nathaniel Lawlor because he worked on the Skittles “Exclusive the Rainbow” discussed above, but also because he got to co-write the “Skittles Broadway Musical” which makes me jealous.