Super Bowl ads are a big deal.
The game's broadcaster, NBC, charged as much as $US7 million for 30 seconds of air time so advertisers have to make sure they get plenty of bang for that many bucks.
In 2021 — when the US was still in the grips of the COVID-19 crisis — advertisers were cautious and respectfully acknowledged it was difficult year.
But this year saw a return to the time-tested tactics of going for big laughs, with nostalgia being a recurring theme among this year's offering of big-budget ads.
Ronald Goodstein — an associate marketing professor at Georgetown University's McDonough school of business — said people were tired of thinking about COVID-19 and advertisers were making a point of returning to familiar themes.
"People like comfort, given the time we have now, and there's some comfort in nostalgia," he said.
Here's a few of the old pop culture references from the broadcast.
The Sopranos
The opening credits of The Sopranos featured James Gandolfini driving a Chevrolet:
Chevrolet recreated that sequence to advertise its new all-electric model, bringing in Jamie-Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler, who played Tony Soprano's children in the series, for the one-minute ad.
Using the now grown-up Soprano children in the ad ties in with the tagline: "a whole new truck for a whole new generation".
While the series ended in 2007, there's been a resurgence in its popularity after it was made available on streaming services, attracting a new generation of fans who were too young to watch The Sopranos when it originally came out.
"It's really cool because this commercial is shot almost frame for frame," Sigler told People Magazine.
"You could put the original and the commercial up next to each other and see the parallels.
"It's such a cute little Easter egg that we can give to fans."
Britney Spears and the ETrade Baby
ETrade, a US online broker company, ran an ad in the 2008 Super Bowl featuring a baby dubbed over with an adult's voice talking about making investments via the internet.
It was so popular the company released other iterations of the ad, bringing in comedian Pete Holmes to voice the baby in 2010.
The ads kept coming until ETrade Baby retired in 2014:
But the company brought the baby — and Holmes — back for the 2022 Super Bowl, reviving its official Twitter account:
The advertising agency, MullenLowe New York, went even harder on the nostalgia by featuring Britney Spears' first hit Baby One More Time.
It capitalises on the popularity of the FreeBritney movement and subtly draws a parallel between the ETrade Baby's revival and what many Britney fans see as the singer's return to glory after she was released from her conservatorship last year.
The DVD logo from The Office
It's regarded as one of the best examples of a cold open for a television show.
Steve Carell's character, Michael Scott, is holding a meeting but everyone is focusing on the DVD logo screen saver behind him:
The Office aired from 2005 to 2013 but, like The Sopranos, it's still very popular thanks to streaming services hosting the entire series for old fans to rewatch and new fans to get hooked on it.
Cryptocurrency company Coinbase pitched its service to fans of The Office by replicating the DVD logo bounce with a QR code that took people to its website.
It was a hit at Super Bowl viewing parties:
The Coinbase app was later inundated with users, with US media reporting it crashed from all the traffic.
Barbie and Skeletor
Actor Anna Kendrick is a big name, but her co-star in the ad for the Rocket Mortgage is even bigger … albeit smaller in stature.
The ad featured Kendrick talking about how Barbie wanted to buy her dream house, using the company's app to get a competitive edge.
It also featured He-Man and Skeletor, from the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series, a beloved children's franchise from the '80s.
Bringing those two '80s and '90s franchises together with Kendrick — who appeals to the demographic of young women, thanks to her roles in Pitch Perfect and Love Life — aims the ad towards millennials now grappling with the prospect of entering an overly competitive housing market.
Some big movie trailers dropped, too
It was a big day in the film and television advertising world, with a bunch of entertainment companies getting in on the action by releasing their trailers on YouTube.
Marvel fans were given two minutes of Dr Strange footage to come up with new theories for what's going to hit the Marvel Multiverse next.
The film — which will hit cinemas in May — stars Benedict Cumberbatch along with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Elizabeth Olsen, Benedict Wong and Xochitl Gomez.
Oh, and did you notice the brief appearance of Rachel McAdams in there too?
We also saw a whole lot more of the Lord of The Rings series The Rings of Power, which is due to drop on Amazon Prime in September.
The show is set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, focusing on the legends of the Second Age of Middle-Earth's history.
And another trailer that people were talking about was Jordan Peele's new film Nope, which sees him reunite with Daniel Kaluuya from his earlier movie Get Out.
It's all very mysterious, with the film's description revealing only that it's about a group of people who "bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery".
ABC/Reuters
