2016 Super Bowl commercials: Shock Top trades insults with T.J. Miller

Everyone loves a celebrity endorsement for their Super Bowl ad, right? It gets people talking, and sometimes even buying a product that they would not otherwise consider.

For Shock Top’s Belgian White, the company has decided that “Silicon Valley” star T.J. Miller is the right guy to help promote their company during the big game. We’ve never had the beer, let alone heard of it, so this one’s interesting for us to analyze compared to some of the other Super Bowl commercials we’re looking at. Is this something we’d want to try based on the ad? That’s how we’re looking at this.

The idea – T.J. Miller walks into a bar and has a conversation with basically a talking orange atop a tap of Shock Top. From there, he’s insulted repeatedly and challenged, and the two have a fun back-and-forth. At the end, the company puts up the phrase “live life unfiltered.”

What works – The branding. You hear the name Shock Top, you see it written on the tab, and you even get through the discussion an idea of what the beer tastes like. All of this is great for those of us (i.e. those writing this article) who have never had it. Also, some of the one-liners are fairly funny and we really like Miller. As a diehard fan of the show, this would at least give us an incentive to check out the other videos that the company has of him.

What doesn’t – Miller is very popular with a certain crowd, but is he a household name per se? Not everyone watching is going to know who he is. Also, we know the brand is going for something edgy and challenging, but we’re not sure we want a beer that is just going to make fun of us in animated form, even if some of the lines are good.

Overall Grade – B-. It’s a middle-of-the-road Super Bowl ad. It’s moderately funny, but mostly forgettable. The grade’s probably lower for those of you out there who are not Miller fans.