Business

Watch Sunday's Super Bowl Ads Today

If your favorite part about the Super Bowl is the advertisements, you don't need to wait until Sunday to get a taste of the $3.5 million 30-second spots.

By John Hudson
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If your favorite part about the Super Bowl is the advertisements, you don't need to wait until Sunday to get a taste of the $3.5 million 30-second spots. As Stuart Elliott in The New York Times reports, many of blue-chip ads designed for Super Bowl XLVI are pre-released online thanks to a new corporate strategy to build buzz before the actual event. “This is the first Super Bowl where social media has been an integral part of marketers’ plans,” Horizon Media associate director Adam Schwartz tells the newspaper. "You can get more bang for your buck." It's not clear what effect the pre-releases will have on NBC's ratings (will non-sports nuts turn away?) but it's obvious a number of major corporations have drunk the new marketing plan Kool-Aid. For instance:

Kia The South Korean auto-manufacturer released this doozy on Thursday: a nice little gender study on the unspoken dreams of husbands and wives:

Lexus In an "unleash the beast"-style marketing campaign for its new 2013 GS sports Sedan, the Japanese automaker released this ad on its Facebook page:

MetLife In an ad that probably cost a fortune in licensing rights, insurance giant MetLife rolled out this ad two days ago featuring everyone from Charlie Brown, Speedy Gonzales, Scooby Doo and the Jetsons. At Metlife, even Mexican mice qualify for insurance!

Chevrolet The American automaker released this delightful 1:00 minute ad set in pristine American suburbia in January and it's already racked up over 1 million views:

Volkswagen An instant classic, the German automaker combines an adorable dog and Star Wars to make Internet gold:

Honda The ad that undoubtedly made the biggest splash before the Super Bowl is Matthew Broderick's Ferris Bueler nostalgia-fest for the Honda CR-V:

Audi: The German automaker enlists Echo and the Bunnymen for this excellent, vampire-loaded 1 minute spot:

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.