Connor Sargeant
Sports Editor
Liam Neeson Clash of Clans, 2015
For a good commercial to be great, it needs to check off a few boxes: A-list celebs, relatability and the funny factor. In 2015, Supercell checked all these boxes and more with their 2015 ad “Angry Neeson.” For the nearly 150 million monthly players on Clash of Clans, nothing is more infuriating than when all your collections are full, and before you can spend them on upgrades, bigbuffetboy85 comes along and raids your village, taking your precious resources. This is precisely what happened to Liam Neeson in a coffee shop. Instead of just moving on, the “Taken” actor goes on a monologue that hilariously and ominously discusses the fate of bigbuffetboy85’s village. This is an exaggeration of reality, but it is funny due to the relatability of this situation and how seriously Neeson takes his Clash of Clans village compared to most players. While this ad was only a minute long, it was burned in the memory of countless gamers’ minds who talked about this minute of time for much longer afterward.
Tyler Pruneau
Campus Correspondent
2023 Tubi Ad
Super Bowl Sunday is right around the corner and according to Forbes, 11% of people watch the big game just for the ads. Over the last several years, companies produced creative ways to get fans to laugh. Some may say that Doritos or Budweiser comes up with the best commercials, but Tubi stole the show in 2023. Sports fans never want to miss a play, and when the channel gets changed, it is frustrating. Tubi did just that and created an ad to make it look like the matchup was back on and someone flipped the channel. The streaming service fooled millions within 15 seconds, but at the end of the day, it gave many a good laugh and was talked about for some time.
Alex Klancko
Campus Correspondent
Terry Tate Office Linebacker
Superbowl Sundays, for many, are all about the game, but this year, it is about the commercials. Who wants to watch two of the most hated teams in the NFL battle it out for a championship when you can watch the commercials. There are many memorable commercials like the “Hey Kid, Catch” Coca-Cola ad from 1980 or most of the Budweiser ads. But to me, there is one ad that stands out: the 2003 Terry Tate Office Linebacker ad. This is an ad that is more iconic than Prince singing Purple Rain in the rain at the 2007 halftime show. “Terry Tate Office Linebacker” was such an iconic ad, that people only remember the commercial, and forget that Reebok produced it. Also, “Terry Tate Office Linebacker” was so successful afterwards that nine total episodes were made because it was so popular. You don’t see other Superbowl ads getting eight more episodes after they were first aired, but “Terry Tate Office Linebacker” did. And that is why “Terry Tate Office Linebacker” is the greatest Superbowl ad of all time.
Ryan Lombardi
Campus Correspondent
It’s a Tide Ad (2018)
A great Super Bowl commercial is one that makes viewers continue to think about a product even outside of the ad. In 2018, Tide released an ad campaign that made viewers question if everything was, in fact, a Tide ad. It featured David Harbour infiltrating every type of ad you’d expect to see, beer, soda, cars, you name it, proclaiming that each one is a Tide ad because of all their clean clothes. It didn’t stop there, with Tide buying up multiple spots throughout the game, which all seem like typical ads before Harbour inevitably appears, forcing viewers to expect him even in completely unrelated commercials. This included one with a woman dancing with Mr. Clean before being woken up by none other than Harbour, as if both she and the rest of the world were delusional and that everything was a Tide ad. At this point viewers began to collectively lose their minds, with every sight of clean clothes prompting them to think of Tide.