Superwomen: This year's star-studded Super Bowl ads are laced with girl power
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While Super Bowl players fight it out on the field, a high-powered pack of celebrity gals – including Kim Kardashian – will duke it out during the Big Game’s commercials.
Today, Skechers will announce that Kardashian, the reality TV star, will be featured in its must-watch Super Bowl spot.
“It’s a very provocative ad,” says Kardashian, in a phone interview from the Los Angeles commercial set late last week. In the commercial, says the gossip- sheet queen – famous for her fast-but-furious romances, “I break someone’s heart – again.”
Also, today, Teleflora will announce that country music icon Faith Hill will star in its Super Bowl spot – a far cry from last year’s Don Rickles voice-over.
Kardashian and Hill will go toe-to-toe for viewer attention – and brand-name retention – against three Go Daddy spokesgals: race-car driver Danica Patrick; fitness guru Jillian Michaels – and yet a third, big-name Go Daddy girl to be revealed in its commercial during the game.
In the case of Kardashian, Cohen says, it’s a signal of how pop culture and the Super Bowl are now intersecting at an unlikely crossroads. “Trash culture has become so mainstream,” she says. “It’s even mainstream enough for the Super Bowl.”
The Feb. 6 game on Fox sold out all ad slots in October. Advertisers paid an estimated $3 million for each 30-second slot. It’s the first Super Bowl in years to sell out all available ad space so early.
The ad for the Skechers Shape-Up shoe line features Kim Kardashian involved in yet another breakup as she trains. “There was a lot of sweat making this ad,” says Kardashian, in a tongue-in-cheek interview. “It gets a little slippery.”
When she was a kid, she says, she used to watch the Super Bowl with her family in order to see the commercials. Her favorite Super Bowl commercials, she says, are the Pepsi ads from the 1990s that starred supermodel Cindy Crawford. Now that Kardashian – also a model – is staring in her own Super Bowl spot, she says, “I’m not replacing her. I’m just joining the club.”
Meanwhile, Teleflora’s link-up of Faith Hill with the Super Bowl is easy. For years, she’s sung NBC’s familiar, foot-tapping Sunday Night Football theme song.
“She relates to people on both sides of the gender divide,” says Shawn Weidmann, president of Teleflora. In its Super Bowl spot, Hill gives Valentine’s Day gift advice to a young sound technician who doesn’t quite know what to get for his girlfriend.
Then, there’s GoDaddy.com.
To introduce its new Web domain, GoDaddy.co, it’s going to roll out a third GoDaddy girl in one of its two Super Bowl spots.
While GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons won’t reveal who she is, he says she’s a “well-known, edgy, racy iconic actress. And she’s our first blonde.”
In one ad, Patrick and Michaels star as superheroes who crash through walls to find small businesses that still don’t have their own websites. In the other ad, dubbed “The Big Reveal,” the two women stand on stage to introduce the new GoDaddy girl in a very provocative way, Parsons says.
“Most advertisers don’t have the guts to do the type of advertising that we do,” Parsons says. “We don’t worry about offending the vocal minority.”