I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. I don’t have anything against it; it just isn’t really my thing.

I also didn’t watch it for the ads, as people sometimes do, even through marketing and advertising are kinda my thing.

Super Bowl ads have become a genre unto themselves—mostly disconnected from core corporate messaging, target audience strategy, or real business objectives. They’re driven by corporate ego and deemed successful because of vanity metrics. They’re a way to say, “Look at us, we have Super Bowl money. Maybe this will win us an award.”

And the problem isn’t just that these ads are inefficient and ineffective; they loudly and brashly misrepresent what marketing actually is.

For some brands, a Super Bowl ad can make some sense. If Doritos wants to take its target audience of pretty much everyone, reach them in a moment when they’re going to be actively snacking all day, and put together a silly / funny / whatever commercial, fine.

But crypto ads? B2B enterprise software? Amorphous AI solutions?

As the most-watched TV event in the U.S., the average Super Bowl viewer is, well, average. One unsurprising breakdown from Media Culture shows what you’d expect: viewership is close to evenly split between men and women (skews a bit toward men), with a median household income that pretty much matches the national median household income, and education level that pretty much matches the national average (a little over a third with college degrees).

Does the average person care about your business? For Doritos, sure. Go for it. Enterprise AI crypto solution startup? Maybe sit this one out.

The argument is, of course, that among those millions watching the Super Bowl will be your target audience. And they’re not wrong. I’m sure the CIO of some medium-sized business looking for an enterprise AI crypto solution is also watching. But is that really the best way to reach them? Are there better channels? More honed messaging? More direct outreach? And does the $8 million price tag really justify the $300,000 2-year contract you’ll be signing with them?

On top of all of this is the problem that this approach creates for marketing as a discipline. Millions of people see these ads and come away thinking that’s what marketing is—including that CIO of that medium-sized business. And when they get back to the office Monday morning they pull in the marketing team and say, “Hey, we should do something like [some baloney they saw the night before].” And then the marketing strategy we’ve been delicately building for months is thrown out the window.

Marketing isn’t doing itself any favors perpetuating the idea that Super Bowl commercials are anything more than an exercise in corporate vanity. We’re reinforcing symbols of success that actively undermine our actual value. We’re training executives to trust spectacle over substance, and then acting surprised when marketing isn’t taken seriously—and when we’re on the sidelines while real business decisions are being made.

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