Alaska Airlines Nails It With This Funny And Informative COVID-19 Commercial

Do you know the biggest problem with Super Bowl ads?
There’s so much buildup to them that the advertisers and ad agencies try and do too much with them. And what you wind up with is a bunch of disappointing ads that are dumb and miss the mark.
Most start out well and then you wind up looking around the party to see if there’s any more dip for your potato chips or turn and talk to the nearest person to you if you’re watching the game in a bar.
But in Super Bowl LV, one ad made you keep looking at the screen. It had you laughing and elbowing the person next to you to say “hey watch this; it’s great!”
It was the Alaska Airlines commercial and it was the best Super Bowl LV ad. And by a long shot.
A lot of people liked the M&Ms one and that was definitely cute, but Alaska NAILED it with its ad.
It was timely.
It was clever.
It was creative.
It was informative.
And it was funny.
The ad featured flight attendants doing a hilarious version of the usually boring pre-flight instructional video. Every person who has ever flown could relate to it. So that was something that resonated with millions of viewers. Good start!
It then did something nearly every other ad has failed to do the past dozen years – it took a great concept and followed it through to the end. In other words, it was like Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers: it finished what it started.
The ad used the Men Without Hats “Safety Dance” song and turned it into the “Alaska Safety Dance,” a hilarious, fast-paced and educational video highlighting the airline’s COVID-19 policies.
It featured flight attendants dancing in a hanger and in the aisle of a plane doing many of the hand gestures all of us flyers know all two well because we see them in the safety demonstrations.
The lyrics were a take on the original song and had lines like this one: “do the dance, do the dance, everybody wears a mask.”
It made an important point about COVID safety in a fun and entertaining way and folks, Super Bowl ads don’t get any better than this one. That is why it is PubClub.com’s runaway winner for best commercial of Super Bowl LV.
In closing, I feel the need to mention that I have worked at Chiat/Day, the advertising agency that started all the Super Bowl ad frenzy with its landmark Apple commercial.
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