Super Bowl LIV Commercials: Keeping Things Light

An audience expected to be around 100 million. Big companies paying as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds of advertising time. In addition to deciding the National Football League champion, the Super Bowl is the biggest event of the year for TV commercials.

Some companies opted to place pregame ads on Fox, the big game’s broadcaster. A spot from McDonald’s, which runs through a series of famous orders, name-dropped Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West, Magic Johnson and even some fictional celebrities like the Big Bad Wolf. A commercial from Secret about female football players urged viewers to “kick inequality.”

The first of two 30-second ads from President Trump, which together cost his campaign more than $11 million, aired at 6:55 p.m. in the first commercial break after kickoff. The spot focused on Alice Marie Johnson, a woman who was serving a life sentence in federal prison on charges related to cocaine distribution and money laundering when her case was brought to Mr. Trump’s attention by Ms. Kardashian West, the reality television star. Mr. Trump commuted Ms. Johnson’s sentence in 2018. Over black-and-white footage of her release, the Super Bowl ad noted that “thanks to President Trump, people like Alice are getting a second chance” while adding that “thousands of families are being reunited.”

This is the first Super Bowl to feature national ads from two presidential candidates — Michael R. Bloomberg, a billionaire Democratic candidate, will have a spot about gun control later in the game. The political tone of the ads will most likely stand out in a broadcast filled with companies trying to avoid sensitive topics the day before the Democratic caucuses in Iowa.

The New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is spending this Super Bowl as a Hulu spokesman, saying in its commercial that “it’s time to say goodbye to TV as you know it” before slyly adding, “but me, I’m not going anywhere.” An ad from the short-form streaming service Quibi has already run, while a spot from Amazon Prime Video is expected later in the game.

In other Super Bowl ads, Verizon, Sabra and other companies are emphasizing — and celebrating — what Americans have in common beneath their differences.

Don’t we all complain about the same things? Don’t we all defy cultural stereotypes? And don’t we all love hummus?

Those are some of the messages that will figure in the sunny portrait of a nation that will emerge from the more than 80 commercials scheduled to appear during the Super Bowl LIV broadcast.

“We’re at a moment in the country where it’s important that we all contribute to things that unite as opposed to things that separate,” said Diego Scotti, the chief marketing officer of Verizon. “It’s a sensitive point — we’re a big company and we have many, many customers, and our intention is in no way, shape or form to have a political message.”

To fill advertising slots costing as much as $5.6 million for 30 seconds — a high — New York Life Insurance, Michelob and Snickers are among the brands with big-budget commercials showing a wide variety of Americans embracing their differences.

But politics cannot help but crash the annual TV party in a tense election year. President Trump’s re-election campaign has booked two 30-second commercials, and there will be a 60-second spot from Michael R. Bloomberg, the late-arriving Democratic presidential candidate who has set records for the amount spent on campaign advertising by dipping into his fortune to blanket television, radio and the internet with ads.

Another exception to the escapist fare is a spot on police shootings. Surprisingly, it comes from an organization that has shied away from the issue: the National Football League. The spot shows the retired 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin reflecting on the 2015 death of his cousin, who was shot by a police officer, and it includes a dramatic re-enactment of the killing.

The commercial promotes the N.F.L.’s Inspire Change initiative, a social outreach program that the league has put together with Roc Nation, the entertainment company founded by Jay-Z. Colin Kaepernick — Mr. Boldin’s onetime 49ers teammate — set off an uproar a year after the killing by kneeling during the national anthem to protest racism and police brutality. The N.F.L. struggled with its response for years.

But the great majority of Super Bowl spots will be jaunty and optimistic. TurboTax has a commercial involving people of many races, genders, ages and walks of life dancing to a bounce-inflected earworm of a jingle, “All People Are Tax People.”

The mood continues a trend toward tonally light commercials that became pronounced in 2018. In 2017, a year after President Trump’s inaugural, Budweiser and Coca-Cola, among other brands, touched on immigration, equal rights and fair pay.

A Bud Light Seltzer commercial scheduled for the Sunday broadcast posits that the brain of Post Malone — the pop star and songwriter known for melding disparate musical styles — is operated by a diverse group of technicians in a control room who all bear his distinctive tattoos. Budweiser will explore the many ways someone can be considered a “typical American.”

The hummus maker Sabra cast two former contestants from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Kim Chi and Miz Cracker, making it possibly the first Super Bowl commercial to feature drag queens. One Million Moms, a conservative activist group that recently pushed the Hallmark Channel to pull ads featuring brides kissing each other, circulated a petition demanding that the Sabra spot be removed, to no avail.

OTHER THEMES TO WATCH FOR BETWEEN TOUCHDOWNS

• WHICH RED TO ROOT FOR? The self-described “color nerds” at Pantone, one of many companies marketing around but not in the game, are going on Twitter to pontificate about a Super Bowl first: This year is the first to involve two teams with the same primary team color (in this case, Pantone 186C for the Chiefs and 187C for the 49ers).

• TEAR-JERKER: A commercial from Google — about the 85-year-old grandfather of a Google employee searching for ways to remember his partner, Loretta — is the one most likely to inspire “I’m not crying, you’re crying” social media posts.

• BLASTS FROM THE PAST: When will the ad industry leave behind its penchant for ’80s and ’90s nostalgia? Not today. A commercial for Avocados From Mexico features Molly Ringwald, the star of “Pretty in Pink” and other ’80s comedies. Cheetos has the rapper MC Hammer and his zoot-suit-inspired pants in an ad that aims to popularize the word Cheetle, Frito-Lay’s term for the orange dust the snack leaves in its wake. Squarespace sent Winona Ryder, the Gen X star who has made a comeback thanks to Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” to Winona, Minn., where she was born. Bill Murray relives the 1993 film “Groundhog Day” for Jeep, and Mountain Dew Zero riffs on the 1980 film “The Shining” with an assist from the “Breaking Bad” actor Bryan Cranston.

• SPACE RACE: Turkish Airlines and others are fixated on the cosmos. Olay alludes to the first all-female spacewalk last year in an ad featuring Lilly Singh and Busy Philipps with the retired astronaut Nicole Stott. The spot from the home carbonation company SodaStream, which includes a cameo by Bill Nye, shows astronauts finding water on Mars. And Walmart crams references to “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “Mars Attacks!,” “Men in Black” and “Arrival” into its “Famous Visitors” commercial.

• TECH FIRSTS: Facebook’s first Super Bowl ad is expected to pair Chris Rock with the “Rocky” actor Sylvester Stallone. Quibi, the short-form streaming platform scheduled to debut in April, was a late addition to the Super Bowl Sunday lineup. Microsoft’s ad features Katie Sowers, the San Francisco 49ers assistant coach who will be the first woman and openly gay person to help lead a team to the big game. Other tech ads include Amazon’s commercial with the ubiquitous pitchwoman Ellen DeGeneres.

• AUDIENCE CHOICE: Companies are in a collaborative mood. Procter & Gamble’s spot will feature seven of its brands in a narrative pieced together by viewers in advance. Bud Light posted two versions of its ad with Post Malone on social media and will air the one that generates the most interest.