The Feminist Ads You Might Have Missed At The Super Bowl

Photo: Youtube

America’s NFL grand finale or the Super Bowl is famous for three things: the halftime performances, the fiery team rivalries and the elaborate advertisements, which air during the game. Companies can spend millions of dollars securing a coveted time slot in one of the Super Bowl’s commercial breaks, guaranteeing them an audience of more than 100 million viewers.

This year, the ads – some of which have production values not dissimilar to short films and often feature very famous faces (Kim Kardashian starred in a hilarious T-Mobile commercial this year) – are also celebrating a powerful feminist agenda that we can really get behind.

But, the most-hyped ad at this year’s Super Bowl wasn’t the aforementioned Kim K spot, but Proctor & Gamble’s “#LikeAGirl”, a 60-second video message of female empowerment, which garnered the highest volume of mentions on social media – some 400,000 references across Twitter and Facebook.

In the ad, young girls show what it means to run, fight and throw like a girl. “When did doing something ‘like a girl’ become an insult?” the video asks. The ad’s finale sees a young girl reveal what she thinks running like a girl means. “It means run as fast as you can,” she says. “Let’s make #LikeAGirl mean amazing things,” the campaign ends.

According to social media monitoring company Adobe, the ad gained the highest volume of positive social media buzz from the Super Bowl, with 84% of mentions referencing feelings of ‘admiration’ and ‘joy’.

Another powerful ad from this year’s Super Bowl? A chilling short for domestic violence awareness organisation No More featuring a re-enactment of a real 911 call, when a victim called the emergency service and pretended to order a pizza in order to alert the police to her abuse. As the audio of the call plays, the ad focuses on domestic snapshots that hint at violence: a fallen photo frame, a partially-closed bedroom door, a cracked wall.

The 60-second commercial, which would normally cost about US$9 million to place, was aired free of charge by the NFL, who has partnered with No More to help promote awareness of domestic violence amongst its players, administration and supporters. Last year, the NFL came under fire when Ray Rice, a player from the Baltimore Ravens, was videotaped assaulting his then-girlfriend in an elevator.

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