Starting off with a commercial that uses a memorable gimmick of a “rabbit hole” taken too literally, Tubi’s “Rabbit Hole” features personified rabbits kidnapping people and shoving the kidnapped people into said “rabbit hole.” It starts off with a woman staring at her laptop in the dark, before being kidnapped by a humanoid rabbit. It progresses to people being kidnapped individually across the same city, turning into a horde of rabbits kidnapping people from their cars. The third act results in the kidnapped being thrown into a “Tubi Hole,” a messily dug hole with holographic screens of Tubi movies playing, and the people becoming entranced by the massive amount of media playing at them. Text appears at the end saying, “FIND RABBIT HOLES YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE LOOKING FOR.” Ultimately, this commercial is memorable, but for the wrong reasons. It is held together wholly by the narrative and visuals, with nothing else tonote. The product placement is only at the end of the commercial, with the brand’s payoff being mediocre. And, like Tubi’s own movies, this commercial paled in quality and memorability to high-production commercials.

An example of a higher-production commercial that makes Tubi’s “Rabbit Hole” collapse in on itself is Squarespace’s “The Singularity.” It is a depiction of Adam Driver becoming infatuated with the idea of a website that makes websites. As he gets more and more confused by the idea, he comes to a realization in the desert that this means that it can create itself, resulting in Adam Driver going through a sort of mitosis. He splits himself into two again and again until the collective mass of Adam Drivers forms a singularity event, destroying all of the Adam Drivers and ending with a scene of empty desert covered by text that says “A Website That Makes Websites.” This commercial creates a far looser narrative than the Tubi commercial but accounts for it through its excellent cinematography, its incessant usage of the word “website” and its memorable feature of a famous actor. It is a commercial that truly spices the mind with cinema-like features, but the best commercial is, in fact, seasoned in real life. 

Popcorner’s “Breaking Good,” is a paradigm of perfect product placement and narrative to create a memorable commercial that will stick to a viewer’s mind for the remainder of their life. It features the main characters of the AMC show, “Breaking Bad,” Jesse Pinkman and Walter White, following their journey of selling a bag of baked corn chips to a drug dealer. It begins with Jesse lifting a chip off the camera’s lens and eating it, exclaiming in joy to a proud Walter. Walter exclaims that the chips are made with all-natural ingredients and air-popped. Immediately, Jesse exclaims that he knows who would buy such an addictive product. It cuts to a scene in the desert where Walter, Jesse and Tuco, a methamphetamine dealer, parody their interaction within the real show, referencing several iconic lines. This is truly the combination of the best facets of a commercial. It has a high production quality, not only matching the cinematography of the original show but improving on it. It uses iconic actors and an iconic TVshow franchise to back them up. The product placement is impeccable, with every character either raving about the snack or listing off information about the product. This powerful combination of such qualities makes this commercial the best out of the Super Bowl XLVII game.

The best aspects of a commercial had been ignored by most of the other contenders in this Super Bowl, relying on far too much on a single aspect. However, the commercials that did meet the standard of quality of two or more pulled them off well, resulting in the narratively-hooking “Rabbit Hole,” the beautiful “Singularity” and the phenomenal “Breaking Good.”