Super Bowl Ads 2018: The Best, The Weirdest And The Most Complicated

Weirdest, Almost-Cool Use Of A Celebrity, Part II: Tiffany Haddish For Groupon

Tiffany Haddish landed her spokesperson gig after telling a side-splitting story on Jimmy Kimmel Live! about taking Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith on a swamp tour using Groupon. So how does the company feature her in its ad? By having her introduce a sketch where a guy gets hit in the naughty bits by a football. I'm sorry, but that's not how you feature a red-hot, up-and-coming star who called herself one of the biggest Groupon fans on the planet.

Best Reference To A Bathroom Break: Febreze's "The Only Man Whose Bleep Don't Stink"

I dinged Febreze in the past for needlessly reminding us what happens in bathrooms between the halftime whistle and halftime show. So it's only fair to give them some props for finding a cleverer way to pitch using their air freshener during the Big Game. It features the friends and family of a guy whose "bleep" doesn't stink. (Turning it into the hashtag #bleepdontstink almost ruins it, though). Of course, it seems a little late to run an ad about freshening your bathroom for the Super Bowl once the game starts — but I guess people can make a last-minute run to the store in a crisis.

Best Announcement For A TV show: Amazon Studios' "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan"

Amazon devoted its first Prime Video Super Bowl ad to a show widely assumed to be an attempt to create a popular hit to boost its original TV series offerings. The ad itself is what you would expect from a high-quality adventure series — shots of star John Krasinski with a gun drawn leading a team of soldiers while explosions flare and a moody version of "All Along the Watchtower" plays in the background. It's more interesting as a signal to football fans that a meat-and-potatoes action adventure series will soon be available on the home of Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle.

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