While players and coaches are gearing up for the Super Bowl—putting in those last minute practices and making sure they have properly fueled their muscles for the big game—one group has already turned in their Super Bowl best: the companies that spent big bucks to run a commercial during air time. This year’s line up of commercials includes one that is controversial at best and makes light of a serious problem at worst.
“Some may say our new commercial is too hot for TV. We’ll let the audience decide,” says Katy Marshall, the marketing lead behind the controversial ad.
The Kraft-Heinz brand snatched up a coveted Super Bowl ad spot to promote its “Devour” frozen meals. The premise for the ad includes a couple who is experiencing problems due to the boyfriend’s “food porn” problem.
The ad features scenes where the girlfriend walks in on the boyfriend as he is watching videos of food on his laptop. He hastily shuts the computer as if he’s been caught looking at something inappropriate. She tries “spicing things up a little” to get his interest back in homemade meals, but he pushes the plate of her food aside to make room for his frozen meal. At the end of the ad, the girlfriend has resigned herself to his food porn problem and is helping him make “amateur food videos.” The couple is seen filming themselves eating one of the frozen meals while in bed.
While the ad is clever and, thanks to a very lofty budget, is very well done, it really satirizes a bigger problem. Those who struggle with porn addiction, or who have struggled with it in the past may find the ad offensive. For all the heartache people express over a pornography addiction, it seems very callous of the company to mock a serious problem.
If you haven’t heard of food porn, it’s a trendy term and hashtag used by foodies who love to eat and look at beautiful food. There’s even a restaurant chain in Southeast Asia by the name. Kraft Heinz jumped on the food porn bandwagon due to its massive following on social media. “With over 184 million #foodporn tags on Instagram, the movement of sharing melty cheese pulls, elaborate table spreads, and overflowing bowls of pasta has reached a new height on social media,” a press release from the company reads.
In addition to the commercial during the Super Bowl, the company has also set up a food porn hotline viewers can call. The press release explains:
DEVOUR is launching 1-83-FOODPORN, the first food porn hotline with seductive descriptions of mouthwatering frozen meals. Hungry callers can imagine laying in a bed of tender noodles, cozying up with melty cheeses, or treating their taste buds to smoky sausage and hunks of Angus beef. The hotline will be live through the game.
If that weren’t bad enough, the company also ran an uncensored version of the commercial on the pornography site PornHub on Monday. The ads only ran for one day, and according to the Wall Street Journal, enticed viewers with the wording “See hot food porn now.”
In case you want to avoid the commercial, it will air in a 30-second spot during the third quarter of the Super Bowl on February 3, 2019.
