The most watched event of the year, the Super Bowl, usually has some of the most highly-watched commercials of the year, and this year there’s going to be a commercial with a feature never seen before in a Super Bowl commercial: drag queens.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” alumni Kim Chi and Miz Cracker will appear in a commercial for hummus brand Sabra during breaks of the Kansas City Chiefs/ San Francisco 49ers game.
Jason Levine, chief marketing officer for Sabra, said, “We’re bringing a diverse group of personalities to the table and demonstrating just how incredibly versatile, relevant and relatable hummus is today. We think we’ve got something for everyone,” reported Ad Week.
NBC News spoke to Bob Witeck, a marketing specialist who focuses on reaching LGBTQ audiences; he enthused that the ad was “revolutionary,” and chortled, “For queer audiences, it is an art form and an ‘outsiders’ language. Reaching the Super Bowl means taking our language into every home in the nation and millions around the world.”
Noting that the ad could reach 100 million people, Witeck said delightedly, “The Super Bowl is the ultimate test, when you can take chances like this and realize that the fear of drag is nothing people imagined it to be. It’s us telling our own joke about ourselves, with a sense of humor and authenticity … with luck, everyone laughs with us.”
I’m gonna be on a super bowl commercial!!!!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰 https://t.co/lkItLPpAoZ
— Kim Chi (@KimChi_Chic) January 23, 2020
Pink News reported, “A teaser for the 30-second clip shows Cracker trying to put a football helmet over a wig while Kim Chi watches on. ‘Ready Cracker?’ Kim Chi asks. ‘Chick peas, I was born ready. I hope this doesn’t give me helmet hair.’”
In January 2019, CNBC reported, “This year’s host network, CBS, is charging a record $5.25 million for just a 30-second spot during the championship match-up between the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots, reports CNBC’s Julia Boorstin. That’s roughly $175,000 per second. The price is up slightly from last year’s $5.2 million, and $1 million more than the cost to air a commercial during the 2014 Super Bowl. In just over a decade, the price of the average Super Bowl ad has nearly doubled …”
Statista pointed out the 2019 Super Bowl was not the most-watched Super Bowl in history, noting, “The 2019 edition of the Super Bowl, which saw New England emerge victorious against the Los Angeles Rams in a low-scoring affair, was watched by 98.2 million viewers in the United States. The most watched Super Bowl in history is Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. This match was also won by the Patriots, this time against the Seattle Seahawks, and a record 114.4 million viewers tuned into the game.”
Whether the drag queen commercial goes viral or tanks, it will have to go a long way to match some of the most popular Super Bowl commercials of all time. Some of the most popular, with tens of millions of views, include Volkswagen’s The Force; Budweiser’s Puppy Love; Doritos’ “Keep Your Hands Off My Doritos,” and, of course, the most famous Super Bowl commercial of them all: Apple’s 1984 commercial introducing the Macintosh.
Here’s the Apple commercial in context of the 1984 game: