In this year’s Alexa Super Bowl ad, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost put their game day routine ... [+]
Following a string of successful Super Bowl ads in recent years that have featured celebrities while reinforcing Alexa’s capabilities and making viewers laugh, Amazon’s Alexa is returning to the Super Bowl this year. The 2022 ad, released today, features married couple “A” listers Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost in a humorous 60 second spot that portrays Alexa as a mind reader (90 second digital cut is linked below).
The spot, titled “Mind Reader” rhetorically asks the question “Wouldn’t it be great if Alexa could read your mind?” while cycling through a series of humorous interactions between Johansson and Jost that show the problems such capabilities would create. These include Jost being exposed by Alexa as not being impressed with his wife’s rehearsal of a new play and Johansson not wanting to hear of some of her husband’s upcoming plans in a humorous way.
The ad clearly does a good job of demonstrating some of Alexa’s capabilities, such as chilling wine, turning on the blender or television, ordering mouthwash, or closing blinds by voice command. Of course, the ad also shows a series of scenarios that indicate what would happen if a sarcastic Alexa could actually read minds and expose what Johansson and Jost are really thinking.
There are multiple reasons to believe that this ad will be a success for Amazon’s Alexa brand. First, the ad’s humorous theme seems appropriate during a time when the Covid pandemic seems to have been lasting a long time. And in a year where many ads will feature celebrities, including prominent ones, the use of memorable celebrities may be important.
A recent academic article published in the Journal of Advertising co-authored by Alexander Mafael, Sascha Raithel, myself, and David Stewart found that historically ads that are both unique (within some boundaries – for example, Burger King’s 2019 Andy Warhol was too unique) from other ads in the current year’s Super Bowl while also being consistent with the brand’s positioning. “Mind Reader” is highly consistent with previous popular ads that use humor and celebrities to reinforce product features and get laughs at the same time. The prior ads include 2021’s ad featuring Michael B. Jordan, 2020’s “Before Alexa” with Ellen DeGeneres, 2019’s “Not Everything Makes the Cut,” featuring Harrison Ford and others, and 2018’s “Alexa Loses Her Voice” featuring Cardi B and Anthony Hopkins (linked below).
With the consistency of the ad with Amazon’s positioning and prior ads being clear, the only question is its uniqueness in terms of its ability to stand out. In this sense, Amazon is relying on the edgy humor to stand out, and to the brand’s credit, the ad asks the consumer to imaging a world in which Alexa can read minds – in a sense, this forces deeper thinking while the ad is still able to reinforce produce benefits and, perhaps get the viewer to focus on what the Alexa product will be able to do in the future. Given that Johansson and Jost are top level endorsers, the only question is the degree to which viewers find the scenarios to be funny. Considering the brand’s track record on this count, it seems likely that this ad will score with large numbers of consumers.
When well conceived, Super Bowl have the ability to build brand equity (see article by Raithel, Taylor and Hoch), and what Amazon has done with its Alexa ads is an excellent example of the long-term payoff from the substantial investment (an estimated $6.5 million per 30 seconds this year) in these ads.
