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.
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.
Snickers: “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” (2010)
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: “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.
Bud Light: “Up for Whatever” (2014)
Featuring: Reggie Watts, Minka Kelly, Don Cheadle, and more.
Game: Super Bowl XLVIII.
Celebrity Paycheck: $2 million.
Total Price Tag: $12.1 million.
Anheuser-Busch's “Up for Whatever” ad was one of the most discussed following Super Bowl XLVIII, but not for all the right reasons. The ad was only meant to teach about the joys of getting out of your comfort zone.
Featuring celebs who said “yes!” to everything and anything, it caused a social media uproar, with some people thinking it was playing with the idea of consent. Anheuser-Busch would go on to apologize for the ad, saying they had missed the mark.