This year’s Super Bowl commercials were packed with superstar cameos and in-your-face messages – from Ellen DeGeneres speaking up for Amazon’s Alexa to an ad about organic farmland. But they also had a few unintended messages, too.
These were the stories America’s largest corporations developed to entertain, inform and sell products on the biggest stage in television – costing as much as $5.6 million per 30 seconds this year. Sometimes, those stories said a lot more than their sponsors may have intended.
Consider Kia’s spot, featuring Raiders running back Josh Jacobs driving an SUV, imagining what advice he would give his younger self. Jacobs grew up homeless on the streets of Tulsa, Okla.; in the ad, he’s watching a young black boy sprint across the broken streets of Tulsa’s struggling neighborhoods. “Push yourself to be someone,” Jacobs says, “and I promise, someday, you will.”
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