The Super Bowl of the advertising industry was last night surrounded by the exploits of a pretty great football game. The commercials always get a lot of scrutiny on the back end, rivaled only by the certain scrutiny on the front end as brands and agencies decide what the best route to take is with their big opportunity. Here at the Writers’ Room Creative Comedy Agency we care about only one route: comedy. Making a Super Bowl spot is hard, there is pressure to get it right and get it noticed, and that usually means choices to go big, to go with CGI, and to go with celebrities. Though that formula usually means they tried hard, it doesn’t always mean they pulled off great comedy.

You can see all kinds of lists, and listen, heart wrenching is valid, touching is fine, informative is whatever. The gold we like to mine for is comedy, and this year’s Super Bowl brought all kinds of comedic attempts, but which ones were the real thing, and which were shiny pieces of pyrite? Let’s jump in. Here are the ones that stood out to us in no particular order.

FTX with Larry David

Pretty solid irreverent choice to go with a messaging scenario where you cast a celebrity to say they don’t like your product. However, marry that with a great concept, and you have a a great chance of standing out. Also, if you marry that with a celebrity that is a comedian, a comedian with a particular style of comedy, and you write it in his style of comedy, the success rate feels more sure. Larry David as himself throughout history being skeptical of what we all know to be the next big thing positions FTX well—in the history of the world I guess? Kudos to FTX on a great spot.

GM with mike meyers AND OTHERS

Speaking of taking a comedian with a known style of comedy—GM rounded up Mike Meyers and others from Austin Powers for what was really a simple idea. There is no crazy CGI, they’re in one location, and it’s mostly witty dialogue and snappy editing. In essence it’s a 60 second sequel, with the same characters, but featuring GM’s lineup of electric vehicles. It’s a video that it plays on nostalgia, but is also funny enough standing on its own. The payoff for GM is at the end when we get to see how they’re going to save the world, then take over the world. It’s solid messaging connected with solid writing.

Uber Eats (Don’t Eats)

In this Uber Eats spot there are celebrities, but they’re kinda secondary, and mixed in with ‘regular’ people. This is a solid concept with hilarious (horrifying?) visuals. It’s a pretty catchy way to say you also deliver inedible items. There is some great delivery in the spot as well, like when the dude says, “This tastes bad.” A fairly straightforward line that has some great comedic flair with a mouth full of dish soap. Also the way they say, “I can’t eats it,'“ is a nice touch.

Coinbase—QR Code

I mean, there’s funny funny, like laugh out loud funny, and there is conceptual funny. Often times something that is conceptual funny can fall flat because they try to dress it with funny funny on top of it. Does that make sense? Where you’re like, “You had a good idea, but it was only a good idea and not a good commercial.” This one, however, is hilarious in concept only and it delivers. It’s just a QR code…it’s just a QR code doing the screensaver thing around the screen. The humor is in the idea. The humor is in the meeting where someone said the idea out loud, for sure starting with, “What if we…” Any commercial that begins with giggling while concepting is funny. The other reason why it works is that it’s engaging without saying anything. People got out their phones and went to the site. You know a commercial is effective a website or an app crashes as a result, which is what happened to Coinbase.

Verizon—with jim carrey

There seems to be a resurgence in the world of wanting Jim Carrey to do Jim Carrey things. This one hits that with a clever tie-in—a world (an apartment) that no longer needs a cable guy, well, the cable guy. This one is simply Jim Carrey reprising his cable guy role that is satisfying to the same age group that found the halftime show satisfying—people consuming pop culture the ‘90s.

alexa—colin jost scarlett johansson

This is a great one—a comedian’s comedic commercial. It feels more like a sketch. They didn’t have to introduce a product, which helps, because then there’s not a lot of information to get across. There is more room for the bit this way, and they executed the bit very well. You can imagine in the writing of this commercial started with something along the lines of, “What if we say Alexa is so good it’s like it can read your mind…” followed by some brainstorming along the lines of, “If that is true, what are funny ways it could happen to a couple?” Boom, you’ve got a bunch of quick hit scenarios that are very funny.

E*Trade—Baby off the grid

This one isn’t bringing in a celebrity, per se (although the voice of the baby, Pete Holmes, became a celebrity in the intervening years), it’s about bringing back a character that worked for so long. Obviously the character of the baby works for a variety of reasons—it’s a baby that speaks like a man in a deadpan voice, chief among them. This one works because they started with a justification of why we haven’t seen the baby in years—he had had enough and went off the grid (and hilariously didn’t age)—and went from there. “I’ll get my onesies” is a great line that fits in the reality they’ve constructed. They never try to do too much with the E*Trade baby spots, don’t try to make them silly and goofy and it works. You expect silly and goofy with a child, so the humor is playing it deadpan, and they execute while never veering too far away from that concept.

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