With the Super Bowl—one of the most watched televised sporting events of all time—right around the corner, advertisers and marketers will have a prime spot for getting their products in front of the world’s eyes. Commercials are king during the Super Bowl, and a simple 30-second spot can cost millions of dollars. But what many people are noticing is that more ads are now catering to dads, not only during sporting events but also during daytime and evening TV.
For the longest time, dads have gotten a bad rap in commercials. They're either portrayed as the doofus of the family or just eliminated from the picture altogether. If you were to look at ads over the last couple of years, you'd notice that a lot of the families portrayed in them are somewhat reflective of society today: mostly run by women. The ads never explicitly state, "Hey, this is a single mom," but you can draw your own conclusions.
More recently, commercials have thrown away the dumb or absent dad and are showing dads involved in their children's everyday lives. Dads do laundry. Dads take kids to school and cook dinner. Who would have thunk it?
A recently launched campaign by Dove pays tribute to the many jobs a father has. The company's Super Bowl ad, which is sure to garner its fair share of "awws," is just one of many ways advertisers are now revamping the daddy image.
And speaking of image, ad companies are realizing that sometimes there are two dads in a household. After going viral earlier this year, Kaleb and Kordale Lewis and their three children are now starring in a Nikon commercial for the company's I Am Generation Image campaign. "Letting people into our lives will help shed light on our beautiful home life, and hopefully counter negative attitudes about homosexuals and raising children," Kordale Lewis told the Huffington Post.
What's quite apropos is that the NFL is doing its part in the rebranding of fatherhood with Toyota. In the car company's three-minute ads, former and current NFL fathers share their experiences and lessons learned when it comes to being a dad. LaVar Arrington, who was joined by his daughter, tells how his father helped shaped him into the man he is today, and how he wants to be a role model for his own daughter.
Below are some other commercials leading the way in dad-vertising.
So while you're sitting back watching the Super Bowl, take a look at a few of the commercials and see if you can recognize the newly branded dad image.