Commercial Highlights From The Super Bowl: Beats, Bud and Bank of America

Super Bowl tv commercials are a big part of Super Bowl coverage, especially before the actual game, partly due to their availability and popularity on YouTube. As we've seen over the years, the commercials designed to be shown once in the Super Bowl now get a month or more of attention given that they can be teased, previewed, analyzed and discussed before the game happens and continue to get attention afterwards. Here are some notable appearances of music in marketing contexts at the Super Bowl.

I was expecting big things from Beats Music and I guess if you're going for the mainstream Ellen Degeneres with an AT&T offering is reasonably big:

Ellen's Big Game Commercial "The Right Music" for Beats Music and AT&T

Honestly I thought they were going to do more with celebrities but I guess they'll spread that out over time.

Cool Twist – 2014 Super Bowl XLVIII Commercial | Bud Light

Budweiser and Bud Light both made music-filled commercial appearances.

In addition to debuting Bud Light's new Cool Twist bottle, the short ad above also debuted a new Afrojack single featuring Wrabel, "Ten Feet Tall."

The single was available on Shazam yesterday and is being released along with the new Bud Light bottle today.

Reggie Watts Limo Ride – Extended Scenes

Bud Light also did a bunch of other stuff as you can see from their YouTube channel. While they do have the "Cool Twist" ad, they only have the extended versions of the #UpForWhatever campaign which includes both Reggie Watts and One Republic.

For me the Reggie Watts limo ride moments, shown above in an extended edition, were the high point of what turned out to be a total surprise for the everyday guy who became the protagonist.

Budweiser also featured Passenger's "Let Her Go" in their "Puppy Love" commercial.

U2 "Invisible" – Bank of America in support of (RED)

U2 premiered a new song, "Invisible," on Facebook before teasing it in a Super Bowl commercial.

Bank of America's brand gets a nice whitewashing in the process by donating $1 for every free download of iTunes for a limited time.

The Return of GoldieBlox

The GoldieBlox toy company also made an appearance via the Intuit "Small Business Big Game" competition. You may remember this company for swagger jacking The Beatie Boys with an earlier ad promoting girl power.

However, I was disappointed to read that GoldieBlox founder Debbie Sterling actually thought the song "Girls" by The Beastie Boys was a " girl power anthem." That's pretty clueless.

Nevertheless, the ad using "Girls" was a great bit, despite ensuing legal and emotional responses, and their Super Bowl ad has a nice resonance as well.

[Apparently I botched the ad. This might be it. That said, I hereby promise to stop writing about things that require more time than I have to dig into.]

Lots more happened and you can dig in via AdAge and Billboard.

Also worth a look: Forbes.

More:

• Ellen DeGeneres Teases Beats Music Super Bowl Commercial and Partnership
• What Do Superbowl Performances Do For Artists? Sales Jump 1597%

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/Facebook) is currently relaunching All World Dance. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

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