The 10 Best Super Bowl Ads of 2020

It wasn’t the strongest year, with few truly iconic pieces of creative, but there were still quite a few gems in the muddled mix of A-list cameos and emotional entreaties.

Here are our picks for this year’s Top 10 Super Bowl spots:

10. Rocket Mortgage “Comfortable” with Jason Momoa
Agency: Highdive

When you’re a paragon of physical perfection, you generally don’t need to do much more in a Super Bowl ad than be beautiful and, optionally, smile at the camera. But Jason Momoa shows he’s not above poking fun at himself in “Comfortable,” his ad for Rocket Mortgage from Chicago agency Highdive. It’s a surreal, rather disturbing spot, and the product connection is tenuous. But it’s still one of the spots most likely to be discussed and debated at work on Monday.

9. Porsche “The Heist”
Agency: Cramer-Krasselt

What seems to be a car theft from the Porsche Museum in Germany goes in some unpredictable and charming directions in this joyride of a spot from Chicago’s Cramer-Krasselt. Porsche hasn’t always been the most light-hearted brand, and its gravitas has sometimes kept the automaker from feeling as fresh or relevant as competitors like Audi. Add the fact that the spot promotes the new electric Taycan, which makes for a great opening moment of silent creeping, and the ad might go a long way toward boosting Porsche’s place in the pantheon of luxury cars that still feel to be in their prime.

8. Microsoft “Be the One: Katie Sowers”
Agency: McCann New York

While the game definitely didn’t go the way Katie Sowers, offensive assistant coach for the San Francisco 49ers, would have wanted, her story will likely continue to resonate with viewers who saw Microsoft’s ad about her lifelong passion for football and many accomplishments. As both the first female coach and first openly gay coach in the Super Bowl, Sowers was arguably the night’s most pioneering figure. Microsoft made the right call in choosing to devote its ad space to her accomplishments and inspiring message while still incorporating her use of the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 tablet without detracting from her moment in the spotlight.

7. Tide “Super Bowl Now, Laundry Later”
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi New York

Tide pioneered the approach of weaving one ad storyline into multiple ad breaks with 2018’s “It’s a Tide Ad,” but then notably took last year off from the Big Game. This year, the brand was back, with Charlie Day of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia taking the reins from David Harbour. Told to wait on cleaning his shirt that got stained right at the beginning of the game, Day spirals into an existential crisis about the definition of “Later,” spilling over into a promo for The Masked Singer, carousing with the Bud Knight and even crossing paths with Wonder Woman. Day’s frenetic charisma made the journey a fun one, even if it wasn’t quite the narrative innovation we’d hoped to see after the brand’s 2018 ads set the bar.

6. Mountain Dew Zero Sugar “As Good as the Original”
Agency: TBWA\Chiat\Day New York

The Shining, but make it funny. Mountain Dew Zero Sugar nailed it with this perfectly cast and meticulously recreated homage to the 1980 horror film. Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston and Black-ish star Tracee Ellis Ross starred in the ad, which somehow manages to turn a terrifying film into a hilarious soda ad while barely changing a thing. And while most ads in this vein would be hard-pressed to pay off the premise in a way that makes sense, “As good as the original, maybe even better” ties it all together with a perfect piece of copy.

5. Snickers “#SnickersFixTheWorld”
Agency: BBDO New York

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