Advertising as Soft Power, by Michael Korff
When I was posted to Madras (now Chennai) from 1981 to 1983, I was responsible USIS programming in India’s two southernmost states as well as audio-visual programming in the American Center in Madras. Thanks to the efforts of a robust audio-visual office at USIS New Delhi, we were kept supplied with a wide variety of materials that attracted audiences to the American Center. The materials were tailored for different audiences.One of the most surprising “hits” each year was our annual presentation of the Clio Awards. The Clio is an annual award in advertising that recognizes creative excellence and innovation in communication and design, judged by advertising professionals from around the world. I was reminded of my experience with the annual Clio program as I read about the ads that were presented during the course of the February 8 Super Bowl.
After the ads were presented – at great expense – to the largest audience of the year, The Washington Post asked: “Can these Super Bowl ads make Americans love something they don’t like?” The Post asked experts to review four ads on Artificial Intelligence. The story began with a proposition: “Americans are using artificial intelligence apps more but surveys show they doubt the technology is good for them or the world. A growing number of their elected officials are moving to restrict the industry.”
The conclusion of the experts seemed to suggest that among the ads by Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Meta, some ads were more effective than others. But the bottom line was voiced by Allen Adamson, from Metaforce, a marketing firm, said that a perennial question about advertising is whether it can fix bad vibes about a product. “The answer since the dawn of marketing and advertising is no,” he said.
The Post followed up with a second article on “The best, worst and weirdest Super Bowl commercials of 2026.” It seems to come down to the quality of the acting in the ads. It praises Sabrina Carpenter’s ad for Pringles, “in which [she] builds a boyfriend out of Pringles, watches him accidentally die, and then eats his crunchy remains.”
The paper also praises the Hellmann’s ad, especially because “the character’s increasingly weird non sequiturs…hang together only because they’re delivered by our greatest maestro of comedy songs with bizarre premises and weird non sequiturs: Andy Samberg.”
Praise is also heaped on Xfinity for a Jurassic Park-themed ad that solves the security-failure scene thanks to Xfinity’s security safeguards.
On the other hand, The Post calls the Alexa+ advertising counter-productive (“do you mean to tell me that this short horror film about all the ways an AI house manager could conceivably kill you is supposed to make me want to buy said AI house manager?”).
There are a couple of ads with bathroom humor that you have to see to understand – one of them involves Raisin Bran cereal and another involves the color of your urine – and there are other ads that are worthy of rewatching – all are included in the WaPo article, well written by Ashley Fetters Maloy.
Michael Korff is PDCA’s Editor-in-Chief.