I usually do a Super Bowl commercials post, but it’s a lot of work and I’m in my toad era. We have coverage today of Beyonce’s Verizon commercial and Ben Affleck’s Dunkin commercial. You can see a more comprehensive list of the commercials here. I wanted to talk about Cardi B’s commercial for NYX’s Duck Plump lip gloss. It was originally a one minute commercial with the first half featuring Cardi and some dancers and the second half a joke about dudes putting the lip gloss on their d*cks while women experts tell them that’s dumb. The people at CBS decided the second half was too suggestive and so NYX cut it down to 30 seconds with a QR code to access the full ad. I’m embedding the full version below and here’s a link to the ad that aired live. Here’s more, from NPR:
When I spoke with Shayne Millington about the cheeky Super Bowl ad she was planning with Cardi B., the advertising executive was excited about the prospect of tweaking male sports fans in a way Big Game ads often don’t do.
But the NFL threw some cold water on her plans Sunday, preventing makeup brand NYX from airing part of their ad suggesting that men may have mistook the name of their Duck Plump lip gloss and used it in a certain private area. Instead, they aired 30 seconds featuring Cardi B and displayed a QR code viewers could use to access the full ad.
Millington, the Chief Creative Officer at McCann New York, told me before the game that the ad was an attempt to turn the tables on traditional Super Bowl advertising.
“You have to really look at how women have been portrayed in Super Bowl ads and in the past, and it’s not great,” she added. “So, on a platform as big as the Super Bowl where men have [traditionally] had the upper hand with humor…[this time] women will have the last laugh with Cardi B.”
Turns out, Millington’s ad was among the sauciest in a Super Bowl where brands played it safe even more than usual, perhaps due to the mammoth, $7-milion-per-30-seconds fee for airtime.
Of course this ad was cut. They can’t offend their target audience. It was a fun, memorable ad and it should have been aired in full. I don’t consider it too racy for the Super Bowl, but I guess I don’t have little kids or whatever excuse they’re using. I remember some of the sexist ads the Super Bowl has aired in the past, and I’m glad we’re moving away from that. NYX is an excellent brand, I own a lot of their products, and I hope they end up getting more publicity after this. Duck Plump retails for $13, it’s vegan, and NYX is giving free shipping when you order it through their site.
Incidentally, Uber Eats also edited their intended ad after backlash from allergy awareness groups. The ad focused on people forgetting things, including Jelly Roll forgetting his face tattoos and Jennifer Aniston forgetting David Schwimmer. The original version featured a man allergic to peanuts eating peanut butter, but it’s not funny to make fun of people’s allergies and Uber wisely took that out.
