M&M's Super Bowl 2024 Ad Puts The Limelight On Almost-Winners

Major sporting events place a great deal of focus on the winners, and the Super Bowl is no exception. Even the ads are guilty of this, with Coors Light shading Corona in a spot implying that Coors Light blows Corona away in terms of chillness. M&M's (a Mars brand) is taking a slightly different approach, however, with its "Almost Champions" ad, which features Scarlett Johansson, Dan Marino, Terrell Owens, and Bruce Smith each reflecting on how it feels to have reached the cusp of becoming a champion, falling only at that last hurdle. The former football players were runners-up in past Super Bowls, and Johansson lost two Oscar campaigns (in the same year, as an M&M reminds her). "Only Super Bowl winners get a ring, right? Wrong. M&M's presents the Almost-Champions Ring of Comfort."

The purpose of the ad is to use humor and "to create a world where everyone feels they belong." Speaking in a press release, Johansson described the ad as playful and comforting, and said her favorite thing about the ad's theme was "the encouragement to have fun and a sense of humor, whether you're a winner or not." The ad will be shown during the first commercial break of Super Bowl LVIII, in which we'll see Johansson and her three NFL co-stars admiring the newly unveiled M&M's Almost Champions Ring of Comfort, made to provide solace to the almost-champions of the world.

The Ring of Champions, which will be presented to Super Bowl runners-up, is quite innovative in its makeup. The diamonds in the 14K gold rings are made from heated, purified, and compressed M&M's peanut butter (a comfort food), which is certainly one of the more interesting methods of creating synthetic diamonds. The ad also claims that the rings are polished by the sighs of near-winners, as each former football star and Johansson breathes on the ring and explains what they nearly won.

Because it can't make these rings available to everyone, M&M's is partnering with Champion to drop its Comfort Collection, a limited-edition set of super-soft hoodies and joggers embroidered with brightly-colored M&M's candies. From today till Super Bowl Sunday, fans can visit the M&M's website to declare their allegiances. A select group of fans of the losing side (the almost champions) will be comforted with a free set of sweats.

Humorously presenting inclusivity in its Super Bowl ads isn't new for M&M's. In its 2023 spot featuring Maya Randolph, M&M's dunked on the backlash to the changes in the M&M's' appearances, which became the unlikely focus of a culture war. Randolph took over in the absence of the spokes candies, who were on hiatus at the time, and presided over a series of odd changes — from putting her face on the candy to introducing chocolate-covered clams.