It now costs $7 million to air a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl. That doesn’t include the fees of celebrity endorsers, production teams or any other costs of creating an ad worthy of the big game.
Try It: America’s 50 Most Expensive Retirement Towns
Learn More: Why Skipping a Financial Advisor Could Be Your Biggest Money Mistake
So, what happens when companies spend all that money just to broadcast an ad that hurts their image? They end up on a list like this. Here are five of the most expensive ad flops in Super Bowl history.
In 2019, Jeff Bezos spent $20 million to share an ad for Blue Origin, his space exploration company. But a week before the big game arrived, he canceled it. The reason, according to reports, is that his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, was involved in creating it.
Discover More: How Much Money Is in the World Right Now?
This happened around the same time Bezos announced he and his first wife, Mackenzie, were getting a divorce. Reporters theorize Bezos wanted to avoid embarrassing her with the ad. But canceling an expensive commercial so close to the Super Bowl caused waves that eventually got the story out there anyway.
Bezos probably would’ve been better off allowing the ad to air. Canceling it only drew more attention to the awkward questions he hoped to avoid.
Next up is Pepsi’s infamous Kendall Jenner ad. Launched in 2017, it featured Jenner giving a Pepsi to officers at a heated protest. After sipping the drink, the officers and protestors begin laughing and cheering together.
The ad was meant to make a splash during the Super Bowl that year. But people saw it as tone-deaf and even a little offensive. It was like Pepsi was downplaying the issues people were protesting about around that time.
Estimates suggest the commercial cost around $5 million to create. They also say Pepsi could have planned a $100 million ad budget for a campaign like this. However, the company quickly pulled the commercial after facing backlash from the public.
Dodge is the company behind our next Super Bowl ad fail. It created a commercial for Ram trucks that featured Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Viewers saw trucks traversing various terrains while King’s words played in the background.
People thought it was a strange message. Many didn’t like the company using this speech, which is so important to so many, to sell a product. There were complaints on social media almost immediately.
Dodge spent at least $5 million on 30 seconds of Super Bowl air time. It also lost whatever money it put into creating the ad and probably damaged the value of its Ram brand to some extent
