This Super Bowl, the ads are in the toilet. Literally

During the Super Bowl, advertisers aim to leave a lasting impression with viewers. This year, some hope to do it by grossing them out.

During the commercial breaks of this year’s game between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, potty humor will abound. Liquid I.V. is slated to run a PSA-style national ad during the first quarter that, if its teasers are any indication, will have something to do with urination, hydration levels, and the porcelain throne. Just before halftime, William Shatner is slated to appear as “bran ambassador” Will Shat in a streaming and regional spot for Raisin Bran, nodding to the scatological importance of fiber while toeing the line of acceptable profanity: “Will Shat on the car!” one character declares, incredulous.

The jokes won’t stop there. In a regional ad set to run in the Philadelphia area, Garage Beer co-owner Jason Kelce repeatedly smears horse feces on his face in a not-so-subtle reference to Budweiser’s famous Clydesdales. (“These beers taste great, but it smells like—” he says as he sips on a beer, the audio cutting out the last word.) And in lieu of a traditional TV buy, Columbia Sportswear Company released what the company’s SVP and head of marketing, Matt Sutton (no relation), dubbed on LinkedIn “the Super Bowl’s sh*ttiest ad”: a beer brewed in partnership with the Portland, Oregon-based Breakside Brewery using bona fide bear poop that’s designed to give consumers “a taste of the outdoors.” The name of the beer, which will be handed out at Super Bowl tailgates? Nature Calls.

Throughout the course of human history, gross-out jokes have served as a reliable way to get a big laugh among the adolescent set, and this year’s Super Bowl—or should we say, Toilet Bowl—is set to bring that style of humor to an audience of millions. The sophomoric creative choices reflect brand pressures to land punchlines during a high-stakes advertising moment while also avoiding higher-risk messages that could potentially alienate audiences. (Often, the greatest short-term gamble of a bathroom joke is that a viewer wrinkles their nose with an “eww.”) And the humor and shock value is certainly bound to make an ad conversation fodder—even if it doesn’t necessarily win over consumers long-term.

“You wanna be talked about,” Ronnie Goodstein, associate professor of marketing at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, told Marketing Brew. “People will talk about the shit ads.”

Gotta go

In the case of Raisin Bran, there is a business reason for focusing on the health benefits of additional fiber, even if those health benefits aren’t exactly polite dinner conversation. Most US adults are not meeting the daily recommended amounts of fiber, and many food companies have identified the nutrient as a growth opportunity; Raisin Bran, newly a part of the Ferrero Group brand portfolio, is planning to revamp its packaging to emphasize its fiber content, Marketing Brew previously reported.

Regarding the scatological-pun-filled spot it came up with, “We’re just kind of hoping to deal with what can be kind of an awkward topic with humor,” Doug VandeVelde, chief growth officer at WK Kellogg Co, told us.

Ditto for Liquid I.V., which wanted to acknowledge head-on the importance of staying hydrated, which its products are aimed at addressing. Urine color is “the most visible signal of dehydration,” CMO Stacey Andrade-Wells told us, adding that research has indicated that it’s something many Americans evaluate anyway to determine whether they should pour themselves another hydrating beverage.

We’ve been here before. In 2013, the struggling retailer Kmart made a splash with TV ads where customers declared plans to “ship my pants” in a did-you-hear-that-right spot promoting its home delivery program. The ad was a viral sensation, USA Today reported at the time, even though some called the ad “gross” and “vulgar.” (It did not, it’s worth noting, run during the Super Bowl.)

But “Ship My Pants” didn’t exactly result in a business turnaround for Kmart, which continued to lay off employees and shutter stores before closing its final full-scale US location a little over a decade later.

Poo-poo

Goodstein said the bathroom jokes represent a certain advertising belief that shocking or even annoying ads can result in a long-term brand recognition boost, even if the creative itself is soon forgotten. It could also represent a perhaps unintentional ad industry endorsement of the theory that “everyone is 12 now”—seeing as 12-year-olds, famously, love a good poop joke.

Some advertisers came up with ways to reference unsavory realities less directly. In Novartis’s PSA-style Super Bowl spot, slated to run in the game’s second half, famous NFL tight ends relax their own rear ends after learning that prostate screenings can start not with a rectal examination but with a blood test. Get it?

Goodstein pointed to the ad as a good example of tackling an uncomfortable topic with a contextually relevant message (the tight-end connection, if you will) while also being relatable to a subset of older men watching the Super Bowl. “There is a value proposition that’s real,” he said, “and they made it kind of fun, and they made it context-sensitive.”

He was less impressed with the scatological ads tied to the game, including Raisin Bran’s spot, which he said reminded him of SNL’s 1989 sketch, “Colon Blow,” a spoof of high-fiber cereal ads.

“It’s not about the taste, it’s no longer about the fistful of raisins in every bowl,” he said of the ad. “It’s about taking a shit.”

If brands are dedicated to toilet humor, so be it—but Goodstein advised that any jokes tie closely into the brand’s value proposition. Otherwise, brands risk losing consumers who end up holding their nose at the punchline.

“I understood [the joke],” he said, “but it doesn’t mean I’m laughing.”

Katie Hicks and Alyssa Meyers contributed reporting.