SUPER BOWL SLEDGEHAMMER

It is that time of year again. Super Bowl! Kansas City versus Philadelphia.  The game will be played in New Orleans. Hard to believe that this is the 59^th Super Bowl and I have been alive for each one. Kansas City was in the first Super Bowl and lost to the Green Bay Packers. The game was headlined as the AFC-NFL World Championship Game. It was only two years later that the name Super Bowl was coined and applied retroactively to the first two games.

At the time the two leagues had agreed upon a merger, but interleague play had not begun. It was the first opportunity for an NFL team to meet a team from the upstart American Football League. A league that had been started because the autocratic NFL Cartel of owners refused to allow new owners and new teams into their league.

The First Game

The first game Green Bay handily defeated the Kansas City Chiefs. In the second Green Bay easily defeated the Oakland Raiders. It was expected that the superior NFL would dominate the AFL and continue to dominate the Super Bowl for years to come.    

The third game was the first to be called The Super Bowl. It was played in Miami at the Orange Bowl on January 12^th, 1969. The NFL Champion Baltimore Colts were favored by 18 points over the AFL Champion New York Jets.

The First Extraordinary Event of 1969

In an iconic moment upstart quarterback, a pretty boy from Alabama, guaranteed that the New York Jets would win. Namath had been the subject of a bidding war between the NFL and AFL. He refused the NFL’s offer and signed with the AFL NY Jets for a record-breaking amount of $427,000 spread out over three years. The equivalent of $4.2 million in today’s dollars.

True to his word, the New York Jets defeated the Baltimore Colts 16-7.  It played beautifully into the counterculture theme of the little guy beating the big bad overseer. It was one of the first extraordinary events of 1969. 

The following year the Super Bowl was played in New Orleans at Tulane Stadium. Mostly forgotten the Kansas City Chiefs defeated NFL powerhouse Minnesota Vikings 23-7. A thirty second ad in that Super Bowl cost $40,000 dollars. The halftime show was a reenactment of the Battle of New Orleans by the Southern University Band.

Super Bowl Ads 2025

This year a thirty second ad costs $7,000,000 and $8,000,000. They have been sold out since August.  As media bifurcates and audiences scatter to the algorithmic driven mass of social media, the Super Bowl provides reach. This year it is expected that the game will command viewership of over 130 million. A staggering number.

The commercial reach will extend well beyond the actual game as the aftermath of rating the best ads will drive additional views. GoDaddy became famous as a nubile start up that spent its entire advertising budget on one Super Bowl Ad every year. It is now the premier web provider.

The 1984 Sledgehammer

The most impactful ad was 1984. Apple produced a 60 second ad directed by Ridley Scott. The opening sequence shows mindless marching zombie-like figures. They are clad in the same gray clothes indistinguishable as individuals. They look up vacantly at a screen where an autocratic voice commands their obedience. Running in their midst is a blonde woman clad in red running shorts and a white top. She hurls a sledgehammer into the screen and smashes it. In the windblown chaos the following words scroll onto the screen.

“On January 24^th Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh and you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984””

It was the only time that ad ever ran. Feels like we might need someone to hurl that sledgehammer again.