Featuring: Betty White.
Game: Super Bowl XLIV.
Celebrity Paycheck: $1 million.
Total Price Tag: $5 million.
This ad campaign has now been running for almost twenty years, and it’s been hailed as one of the most successful, memorable, and funny ads from a Super Bowl ever.
It’s been credited with helping Betty White return to prominence after a while out of the spotlight, and continued airing for more than three months after the Super Bowl. It had more than four hundred million unpaid media views, and more than a decade later this ad campaign still continues, with plenty of funny twists and different celebrity appearances.
Chrysler: “Imported from Detroit” (2014)
Featuring: Eminem.
Game: Super Bowl XLVIII.
Celebrity Paycheck: $6 million.
Total Price Tag: $12.4 million.
The real Marshall Mathers stood up loud and proud for his hometown in this ad, which is one of the longest to ever air in Super Bowl history. Eminem tools around Detroit in a Chrysler 200 while a narrator discusses the city's history.
Chrysler took a big risk with such an expensive ad – Eminem commanded more than five million dollars – but the ad struck it rich for the automobile company, and is credited with bringing them back into the mainstream fold.
Avocados from Mexico: “Top Dog” (2019)
Featuring: Kristin Chenoweth.
Game: Super Bowl LIII.
Celebrity Paycheck: $200,000.
Total Price Tag: $5 million.
Though not all that expensive to make, the ad featuring this tasty, healthy and popular fruit caught plenty of eyes and ears when Chenoweth apparently taught dogs to sing. The ad featured other celebrities who also love avocados.
While there are tens of thousands of avocado producers in Mexico, Avocados From Mexico is one of the biggest, which affords them a bigger advertising budget, and their ability to make this big Super Bowl ad likely helped them out even more.
Diet Pepsi: “You Got the Right One, Baby” (1991)
Featuring: Ray Charles.
Game: Super Bowl XXV.
Celebrity Paycheck: $500,000.
Total Price Tag: $1.2 million.
Diet Pepsi has a long history of some incredible ads and their 1991 offering including famous blind singer-songwriter Ray Charles. It was Charles's fiftieth anniversary in the music business, and the trio of spots in the campaign proved to be extremely popular. In fact, when they ended, Pepsi's retail marks dropped by point two percent – noteworthy for such a large company.
Charles actually lip-synched the ad as opposed to performing it live – it was his voice, but they made it easier on themselves but dubbing him in later.
Chrysler: “It’s Halftime in America” (2012)
Featuring: Clint Eastwood.
Game: Super Bowl XLVI.
Celebrity Paycheck: $0 (donated).
Total Price Tag: $3.5 million.
The world's greatest living actor Clint Eastwood not only appeared to pump up the flagging auto industry during the 2012 Super Bowl but donated everything he earned to charity.
The “Halftime in America” ad talked about the US auto industry after the 2008 economic crisis. Eastwood also touched on the plight of ordinary Americans in a grim tone, but the ad's positive ending mentioned the rebuilding industry. The ad evoked Eastwood's film "Gran Torino", and ran a full two minutes, one of the longest of Super Bowl XLVI.