Coverage: Super Bowl ads lighten up

His viral dance moves inspired thousands of memes when “Hotline Bling” premiered, so why not take advantage of it? On Sunday, T-Mobile treated viewers to a 30-spot poking fun at rapper Drake’s hit song, but it was not the only funny advertisement of the night.

For Super Bowl 50, advertisers took a decidedly different approach with their commercials, bringing out comedians, talking pets and silly dance moves instead of the somber messages seen during the big game last year.

Suzanne Vranica of The Wall Street Journal explained why this year’s funnier tone was a departure from the Super Bowl ads last year:

The National Football League—which has been dealing with controversies that include concussions, domestic violence and the air pressure of footballs—hit a high note during the game with an ad that shows babies, children and adults, who were born nine months after their parents’ favorite teams won the Super Bowl, singing Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose.”

“The spot has universal appeal and makes you feel good,” said Courtney Doyle, a partner at Connelly Partners. The ad was crafted by WPP PLC’s Grey.

Meanwhile, perennial fan favorite Doritos got viewers laughing. Its spot, created by a consumer, featured a pregnant woman getting an ultrasound and the fetus can be seen trying to get dad’s Doritos. The PepsiCo Inc. snack brand “owns shock” advertising, said Chris Becker, chief executive officer of Gyro.

“Doritos was the most clever ad,” said John Brown, a 51-year old real-estate agent in Philadelphia.

All three winning spots featured in the defense-heavy title game where the Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers had something in common: humor.

The lighter tone was a marked departure from last year’s ad contest that experts said was weighed down by too many companies airing overly emotional ads, or spots that tackled heavy issues such as cyberbullying and gender stereotyping.

“Humor brings people together, even if it’s a smile and not a big laugh,” said Allen Adamson, a branding consultant. “Heavier social issues” can be “polarizing.”

Sydney Ember of The New York Times pointed out that even though the majority of ads were funny there were still some cringe-worthy moments:

Of course, Super Bowl ads also invite scrutiny, particularly when viewers can watch many online in the days before the big game. The financial services start-up SoFi, a first-time advertiser, received negative feedback on its ad, which identified people as “great” or not great and ended with the line, “Find out if you’re great at SoFi.com; you’re probably not.” SoFi removed the last part, evidently deciding that telling potential consumers they were not great was a bad idea.

“We want Brandon, our great member, to be the ad’s focus,” a spokesman wrote in an email, referring to one person in the ad. “Anything that takes away from him just seemed like a distraction.”

Last year, Nationwide insurance ran an ad with a boy talking about the things he would never be able to do, like ride a bike or get “cooties,” because he had died from a preventable accident. The ad was intended to draw attention to a program about making homes safer but was widely criticized for being too morbid.

There was also a heavy dose of ick during the game. An ad called “Envy,” about opioid-induced constipation, featured a man watching a dog making a bowel movement and considering a sign for prune juice. Another ad was for a drug to treat irritable bowel syndrome. Jublia, a treatment for toenail fungus, also ran an ad.

Some advertisers decided this year that a TV appearance during the Super Bowl was not worth it. GoDaddy, a longtime Super Bowl advertiser, instead chose to place targeted online ads and run a 30-second commercial during the live stream of the game on CBSSports.com. Another advertiser, Unilever’s Dove Men + Care, opted this year to run video ads on Twitter and on ESPN’s N.F.L. page.

“I think the real thing is having the people who need to see your messages see them,” said Mr. Lubars of BBDO Worldwide.

Fortune ran an excerpt from Bill Syken of Sports Illustrated answering the question often on viewers’ minds during the big game—why do companies pay millions for their own Super Bowl ad:

Companies spend so much on Super Bowl ads chasing the same hope: that after the game, people will be talking about them. That’s why advertisers go all out, pulling stunts to grab viewers’ attention. By going for the big score, they increase the sense that the Super Bowl is a special occasion.

In the early years Super Bowl ads weren’t much different from others, though some did prove memorable. In 1974 Master Lock ran its classic spot in which a marksman pierces the body of a lock with a bullet. (Master Lock appeared in 21 Super Bowls.) Six years later Joe Greene’s “Hey kid, catch” ad for Coca-Cola appeared during Super Bowl XIV.

The modern phenomenon of the Super Bowl ad traces to 1984, when Apple aired a 60-second spot titled “1984” that was more short movie than traditional ad. It re-created the atmosphere of George Orwell’s book and only mentioned the upcoming launch of the Macintosh computer at the end, with the promise “You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.” People in the ad game viewed “1984” as a watershed. “The industry was moving to a very fast, 15-second kind of world,” says Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix, which measures the effectiveness of video advertising. “That ad was the start of the story-telling genre.”

The appeal of the long advertisement rose even as those Super Bowl seconds became ever more expensive. In 1967, a 30-second spot cost $42,000–about $300,000 in today’s dollars. For the 2016 Super Bowl, a 30-second spot will cost a record $5 million. Networks can charge advertisers so much because the Super Bowl provides an extreme version of what sports offer—a television program that is watched by a large audience at the same time.

That’s why the numbers suggest these ads can significantly bump a company’s bottom line. One study shows movies that run ads during the Super Bowl do better than ones that don’t; another shows that companies’ stock prices get at least a short-term boost from a big-game appearance. Super Bowl advertising was key to Career Builder’s overtaking Monster.com in the online job search market, says Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. “The Super Bowl can be a great investment,” says Calkins. “If you want to reach a large portion of the U.S. population quickly, there is nothing quite like the Super Bowl.”