This Year, There Were More Dinosaurs Than Women In Super Bowl Ads

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It’s hard to believe that only four years ago, nearly every ad featured a limiting and often harmful message about women. From Carl’s Jr. to Go Daddy to Victoria’s Secret, brands told us time and time again that a woman’s value lays solely in her youth, beauty, and sexuality. This year, instead of ads that objectified women, many advertisements either didn’t have women in them or simply used them as accessories. Not only did most ads fail the Bechdel test, very few people of color were in ads or given speaking roles. Check out which ads passed as #MediaWeLike and the ones we’re #NotBuyingIt this year.

For the fourth year, we brought media makers and consumers together in a tweetup with our partner, 3 Percent Movement, to tell advertisers that sexism doesn’t sell.

The night started with an ad featuring Olympian Mikaela Shiffrin flying past the boys in an NBC commercial for the Winter Olympics.

The next ad from Toyota received mixed reviews. While it featured people with different abilities, it only included one person or color (at the very end).

Then the team from Sprint gave us an ad featuring a female robot. But some of us had questions…

Unfortunately, Budlight disappointed us yet again with a goofy commercial that relegated women to the scenery.

Dodge continued the trend of many brands like Pringles, that chose to have only one token woman.

Several brands including Wix and Pringles decided not to include ANY women in their commercials:

Mountain Dew and Doritos ad left us with one reminder: Everything is better with a little Missy Elliot.

Diet Coke’s new ad left us wondering, why do advertisements continue to only portray only a certain type of woman?

In Ram’s Super Bowl truck ad, Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice was used in an ad called “Built to Serve.” This was one of the most tone-deaf ads of the night:

With the ads this year, one theme seemed to run through the entire night: representation. Whether it was BudLight’s medieval ad or Pringles comedy sketch ad, women and people of color continue to be underrepresented in advertising.

Justin Timberlake’s  Super Bowl Halftime Show received mixed reviews.

 

However, there were ads that really made us smile and broke stereotypes:

Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr prove men dance. Deal with it. Here for new definitions of manhood #MediaWeLike #SuperBowl #3percentSB

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Thank you for making your voice heard and reaching millions around the globe. Advertisers were listening! Remember, until there is equal representation at ad companies we will never achieve true equality.

The #NotBuying and #MediaWeLike campaign will continue after the Super Bowl. Let’s continue to use our voices to call out sexism and hold the media accountable.

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