Every year, millions of Americans await one of the largest televised sporting events: the Super Bowl. This year, the Kansas City Chiefs won in an intense game against the San Francisco 49ers. While football entices millions of Americans, many watch the Super Bowl for the new, generally humourous, but sometimes controversial advertisements that air during breaks. Let’s dive into the controversial ads from this year.
Pfizer, a biopharmaceutical company that became a household name for developing the COVID-19 vaccine, aired a commercial showing their founders, Charles Pfizer, and Charles Erhart, singing a tune to “Don’t Stop Me Now.” The commercial also features notable scientists, including Isaac Newton, Hippocrates, and Rosalind Franklin. After singing the medicine anthem, the final scene showed a child patient with cancer leaving the hospital — the advertisement aimed to show Pfizer’s new cancer initiative, LetsOutdoCancer.com. Although Pfizer failed to confirm the exact cost of the advertisement, CBS reported that a 30-second commercial was approximately $7 million. Pfizer’s advertisement was 60 seconds long, making it around $14 million in price. The company pledged $15 million in donations to the American Cancer Society, which is nearly the same amount spent on the commercial. While the commercial wanted to bring awareness to Pfizer’s cancer initiatives, the message backfired with viewers due to the expense of putting out a simple message. Many believe this commercial was another step to combat Pfizer shares tumbling in December. The company is now searching for new sources to grow overall sales.
Another highly controversial commercial was a Christian commercial about Jesus. The advertisement especially caused anger among conservatives, who believed the commercial tried to justify certain sins. The commercial was funded by the organization “He Gets Us,” which is a movement of people who have been inspired by Jesus. Some of the images within the commercial showed a woman outside a family planning clinic and another person attending a protest. The last scene showed Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, with the words, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.” According to “He Gets Us,” the images are supposed to contribute to the themes of love and unity. This theme was not perceived by some, including music video director and former congressional candidate Robby Starbuck. Starbuck stated, “The ‘He Gets Us’ feet ad about Jesus seems to imply that Jesus was cool with all kinds of sinful behavior. He wasn’t. He didn’t go hang out with prostitutes or any other sinner because he accepted the choice they made, he did it to inspire them to change.” Many others agreed that the commercial misinterpreted Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, with some claiming that the ad was part of a “psyop to trick Christians into thinking Jesus is fine with sin.”
A third commercial that was not overly popular was by Temu, a Chinese online shop known for significantly low prices. Temu used the tagline “Shop Like a Billionaire,” bringing 123.4 million viewers to its site. The company also paid a total of $21 million for three 30-second advertisements throughout the Super Bowl. When Super Bowl viewers browsed the site, they found certain items as cheap as 99 cents. Dupes for items such as the Stanley Cup were available for four dollars. However, the controversy comes from the company’s dark history of privacy. Temu is owned by PDD Holdings, a company that also owns Pinduoduo. Pinduoduo is a Chinese e-commerce company that was accused of bypassing cell phone security to spy on other apps and read private messages. Temu itself was also sued for violating customer privacy by collecting private information with “unscrupulous” methods. On top of privacy concerns, the company was accused of using forced labor from the Muslim Uyghur population in Xinjiang. Through forced labor, Temu can keep prices even cheaper for consumers. Because of all of Temu’s lawsuits and safety concerns, many were left wondering about the commercials featured throughout the Super Bowl.
While Pfizer, “He Gets Us,” and Temu had highly debated advertisements, there is no denying that successful companies paid hefty sums to have their commercials aired. This brings the bigger question of whether or not commercials should meet a certain standard to be shown during one of the most popular events in America.
