I’m not watching the Super Bowl ads

Why I’m Not Watching the Super Bowl Ads

I had planned to watch the Super Bowl ads, albeit begrudgingly, as one does when one works in advertising.

Then I saw that one of the ads featured Seal as a literal seal (in one of the YouTube thumbnails), and I quickly reconsidered. (What did seals ever do to Seal, anyway?)

Call me a cynic (I’ll wear the t-shirt), but I don’t care for Super Bowl ads.

Maybe it’s because I know too much about what happens behind the scenes. A few years ago, I stopped drinking the Kool-Aid after nearly having a nervous breakdown while working on an account set to air a Super Bowl ad, triggered by my boss almost having a breakdown of her own. Advertising at this level—with the cost of one ad now hovering at around $8 million—does things to the human nervous system.

But there’s more. The real reason I don’t care for Superbowl ads is that, frankly, they shout.

I’d rather my attention be drawn toward something inherently interesting than being bombarded by a bedazzled blur of celebrities and CGI.

I want to be pulled into the gravitational field of a story, not subjected to the artillery of punchlines.

Super Bowl ads didn’t always shout so loudly. Once, they just croaked in the quiet of the night.

Now that was an interesting ad—three frogs croaking 'bud,' 'weis,' 'er.' It didn’t make me buy Budweiser, but I do remember it.

Louder isn’t better.

Good ideas don’t shout.

Take haiku, for example. It’s perhaps the quietest form of poetry—three brief lines, almost whispered, yet somehow capable of transporting you to a specific moment in time, as if you’ve stepped into a memory or caught the weight of a fleeting thought just before it disappears.

One of the most famous haikus by the 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō captures a frog leaping into an old pond. On the surface, it’s a simple image—yet it’s been interpreted time and again because, despite its brevity, it reflects something deep about human nature, time, and our place in the world.

An old silent pond…

A frog jumps into the pond—

Splash! Silence again.

(Translation by R.H. Blyth)

And look, I get it—these are Super Bowl ads, not poetry. They’re not meant to reveal something profound about human nature, time, and our place in the world.

But then again, why not?

We’re spending $8 million per ad, for heaven’s sake. (And that’s just one ad!)

The cynic in me wants to say Panem et circenses to Super Bowl ads, but I’ve got other, more colorful words in mind—especially since I’ll never be able to unsee that Seal-seal hybrid now.

Better yet, maybe I’ll say nothing at all.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from Bashō, it’s to listen. To observe the quieter things of the world. To find creative inspiration there. Creative nourishment, even.

The words in that tattered book, the shape of those clouds that seem to outline a distant memory, the taste of strawberries that takes you back to that summer in '95.

The sound of three frogs croaking in the night.