NEW YORK – Sex sells. Babies sell even more. And advertisers are hoping animals will make you laugh all the way to their stores.

While the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens battled on the field during Super Bowl XLVII, marketers were competing against one another on advertising’s biggest stage.

The stakes were high, with 30-second spots going for as much as $4 million this year and more than 111 million viewers expected to tune in.

Here were some ad highlights:

•Hyundai’s “Epic Playdate” spot right before kickoff showed a family partying with the band The Flaming Lips: wreaking havoc at a natural history museum, getting chased by bikers, going to a petting zoo and playing in a park.

“Make every day epic with the new seven-passenger Santa Fe,” a voiceover states.

When the family gets back home, the daughter asks, “What are we going to do now?” The father replies, “Well, I think there’s a game on,” and the broadcast went straight to the kickoff.

•Budweiser’s Clydesdales made another appearance in an ad that shows a man and his horse reuniting after several years.

•Best Buy’s 30-second ad in the first quarter starred Amy Poehler, of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” asking a Best Buy employee endless questions about electronics.

“Will this one read ‘50 Shades of Grey’ to me in a sexy voice,” Poehler asks about an e-book reader. When the staffer says no, she asks, “Will you?”

•Oreo’s ad featured a showdown in a library between people fighting over whether the cookie or the cream is the best part of the cookie. The fight escalates into thrown chairs and other destruction, but because the fight is in a library, everyone still has to whisper.

•Subway used celebs, including Olympic speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno, boxer Laila Ali and Blake Griffin of the L.A. Clippers, trying to say “Febru-any.

•The Milk Processor Education Program, known as MilkPep and popular for its “Got Milk?” print ads, featured actor and professional wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in a 30-second ad in which he battles all kinds of oddities on his way to get milk.

•Chrysler made a splash with a two-minute spot during halftime showing families waiting for their family members to return home from serving with the armed forces abroad.

Media mogul and TV personality Oprah Winfrey read a letter from the Jeep brand to encourage families to stay hopeful.

•Calvin Klein upped the sex appeal with a 30-second spot showing male model Matthew Terry strutting around in underwear.

•Godaddy.com’s spot toed the line of good taste, showing a close up extended kiss between supermodel Bar Refaeli and a nerdy nobody to illustrate Godaddy’s combo of “sexy” and “smart.”

Related

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