‘All are welcome to meet here in The Middle. The Middle has been a hard place to get to lately … Between red and blue. Between servant, and citizen. We need The Middle. We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground. So, we can get there. We will cross this divide. Our light has always found its way through the darkness.”
– Bruce Springsteen, “The Middle,” Jeep Super Bowl commercial, Feb. 7, 2021.
“Nuance is great, but sometimes you have to kick them in the teeth.” – Springsteen, taking the stage Jan. 30 at “A Concert of Solidarity & Resistance to Defend Minnesota!,” benefiting Minnesota citizens killed by federal agents.
As Super Bowl 60 approaches Feb. 8, the gulf between this year’s national secular holiday and Super Bowl 55 in 2021 seems to get wider with every passing week.
Perhaps you remember: Unprecedented times that still struggled to find precedent, 11 months removed from a global pandemic that would kill 500,000 Americans in its first year. Eight months removed from the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that spawned a global protest movement.
And one month removed from a band of aggrieved insurrectionists storming the Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of an election.
Five years later, so much has changed, yet similarities persist.
President Donald Trump is back in the White House. The country is largely “divided,” even as extreme times distort the typical fault lines. Shared truths remain elusive, as the news ecosystem takes another battering from industry conditions and aggressive misinformation.
The Super Bowl, though remains one of the USA’s cultural markers. And if the game’s great sidelight – the 30- to 60-second commercials that entertain fans during stoppages – is any indication, a look back at the lineup five years ago and the ads that will hit widescreens and hand-held devices this year reflects a culture less willing to embrace many difficult realities at the expense of mentally checking out.
“It’s so divided in the country right now,” Charles R. Taylor, a Villanova School of Business marketing professor and author of ‘Winning the Advertising Game: Lessons from the Super Bowl Ad Champions,’ tells USA TODAY Sports. “This isn’t that new. But it seemed like there was a period it was a little bit calmer. But now, what’s going on, people are really divided.
“Advertisers that make any reference to that division really risk alienating a lot of consumers. That’s why I think we’re seeing one of these two paths: humanity and messages where they’re trying to help people, or it’s really over-the-top escapism-type humor.”
Indeed, you’ll see the usual blend of celebrity mash-ups and cross-generational stars aiming to make an impact for their brands du jour: Sabrina Carpenter stacking Pringles, Jon Hamm, Scarlett Johansson and Bowen Yang returning fire for Ritz and Matthew McConaughey, Bradley Cooper, Parker Posey and George Clooney putting on for the food delivery apps that can drop a latte on your doorstep, if so inclined.
“I do think ads reflect, at some level, the sentiment and mood of the country,” says Kim Whitler, professor of business administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. “They are a lens to understand pop culture at that moment. If you go back and see what’s happening, it’s a way of understanding society.
“Is it complete? No. but it’s a reflection of pop culture, media narrative, managerial press.”
Whitler has analyzed 11 years of data from USA TODAY ‘s Ad Meter, tracking dozens of metrics, most notably around content, tone, use of celebrities and emotional theme. Ads leaning heavily into humor had been on a steady rise in the late 2010s, rising to 76% in 2020, the Super Bowl that aired just weeks before the pandemic began.
It’s probably no coincidence that humor spots peaked at 91% in 2022 – one year after These Uncertain Times were strongly reflected in both ads and the broadcast.
And perhaps launching us into an era where there’s little choice but to play it safe, preferably in the most anodyne fashion possible.
Re-United? Not so much
Springsteen’s message back in 2021 wasn’t exactly radical. The Jeep ad centers on a chapel in Kansas marking the exact midpoint of the Lower 48 states.
“All are more than welcome to come here and meet – in the middle,” he intones, a wailing guitar riff accompanying his weary, everyman delivery.
It closes with a bit of wishcasting that certainly did not hold up in ensuing years:
“To the Re-United States… of America.”
The hopeful tone foresaw a society ready to welcome a vaccine coming online that would greatly dent, if not end, the COVID-19 pandemic when it became widely available months later. Instead, coming months and years would bring skepticism, COVID’s lingering endemic presence and a general rise in grievance culture.
Four years later, and Trump is back in office, the rioters imprisoned for their role in Jan. 6 have been pardoned and Springsteen last week was in Minnesota, joining former Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello for a benefit show following the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents.
The middle, one can say, did not hold.
Trying times, flying lemons
If the time capsule from that Super Bowl reflects, as Whitler stated, the societal mood, the 2021 commercials certainly capture the uncertainty individuals, and, by extension, brands felt at that time.
Nine of the 57 ads in the 2021 lineup reflect some sense of civic responsibility or awareness, and five of those are at least loosely tied to the ongoing pandemic. Some likely felt vaguely anachronistic by the time they aired, more suited for, say, April 2020 than the coming spring when a largely vaccinated society reemerged.
The NFL’s “As One” spot features a Vince Lombardi hologram and inspirational speech dubbed into pandemic imagery – weeping medical personnel, porch food drop-offs – before cutting to a live shot of Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, where a Kansas City Chiefs player is masked on the sidelines, as are fans in socially distanced pods.
Anheuser-Busch goes a lighter route in a pair of spots, with Budweiser’s “Let’s Have A Beer” indirectly acknowledging The Thing We’re Going Through: “So when we’re back, let’s remember – it’s never just about the beer.” Bud Light takes a more sardonic, gee-that-sucked approach with “Last Year’s Lemons.”
Little wonder that nearly nine out of 10 spots the next year steered hard into comedy.
“It’s easy in hindsight to minimize it,” says Whitler. “The summer of protests, the George Floyd killing, people cooped up – how important is watching sports to the psyche of America? All of that was shut down. There was no pressure valve release.
“It’s almost like if you ignored all that and created light and fluffy and silly, I don’t think it would’ve reflected the country at the time.”
The ads also seem to feature a greater commitment to multiculturalism and representation, key themes that emerged after the summer of protests in 2020.
The Ad Meter winner in 2021 was a Rocket Mortgage ad – “Certain Is Better” – featuring a Black family shopping for a home, with Tracy Morgan stressing the importance of certainty.
Squarespace (web site development), Logitech (creators, led by Lil Nas X), Indeed (job-seeking), Huggies (an adorable montage of newborns) and Robinhood (investing) features majority or entirely people of color in their spots.
A nominal increase in representation might have sown the seeds for what developed into the great DEI backlash, cresting with Trump’s reelection and subsequent executive orders. Suddenly, the notion of white “extinction” in advertisements had oxygen in online spaces.
And from 2021 to 2022, the composition of white actors in commercial media “corrected,” rising from 65% to 72%, according to Forbes.
Apolitical impossibility
So, what’s the state of play in 2026?
Increasingly, it’s a world where satire becomes harder to come by.
Five years ago, Will Ferrell, Kenan Thompson and Awkwafina respond to Norway’s dominance in the electric vehicle space by … launching an invasion of Norway on behalf of GM.
Innocuous little Norway? Hilarious!
Yeah, about that.
“What we experienced two weeks ago, when the U.S. used tariffs against allies as a political means to force through the perspective on Greenland – wanting to grab land from another land inside an alliance – exhibits how this is changing,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said this week at the Oslo Security Conference, in the days and weeks after President Trump expressed his disappointment over not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, imposed 10% tariffs on allies like Norway and requested control of Greenland.
“The world order is not breaking down. Completely.”
All this coming at a time when brands are aiming more for the apolitical, an increasingly challenging task.
“The brands are in a no-win situation because once they take a political stand either way, they’re just gonna get themselves in trouble,” says Villanova’s Davis, citing Bud Light, Cracker Barrel and Nike facing dents in sales over perceived controversial campaigns or rebrands.
“It works the other way too – I wonder what Tesla stock price would be if (Elon) Musk had stayed out of politics. They’ve reduced the size of the universe that’s going to buy that brand. And that’s never a good idea.”
Still, politics are almost impossible to avoid, even if you wrap your message in the flag. Anheuser-Busch’s Super Bowl offering leans hard into both patriotism (happy 250th, America!) and its own 150th anniversary. The spot deploys its Clydesdales and a bald eagle (The Colbert Show 2000s intro would be proud), while Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird provides the soundtrack.
Pretty apolitical – so long as you can uncouple modern Skynyrd’s political leanings from the spot.
Even dogs aren’t safe. Ring is touting its cameras’ ability to track down lost pets, and donating said surveillance to animal shelters across the country. Yet that warm and fuzzy gesture comes at a time their partnership with security technology company Flock may greatly enhance law enforcement’s use of customers’ images.
So far, there is no evidence Ring data is being used for Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, or other actions by DHS agencies. Yet the narrow degrees of separation make watching a simple dog commercial a little more fraught.
In that sense, not much has changed in five years, with this 250th edition of America bound to create a funhouse mirror of reactions.
“It’s going to be interesting to watch. You have an anniversary combined with perception around the president,” says Whitler. “The answer is a complex one – based on the decision makers, the brands they’re representing.
“You’d hope it be simple. In reality, how different cohorts and generations see America varies.”