Five themes that emerged in 2014 Super Bowl adver­tis­ing and/or were suc­cess­ful for brands are play­ing expand­ed roles in big game adver­tis­ing in 2015. And it is per­haps no sur­prise that at the cul­mi­na­tion of a sea­son that has includ­ed its fair share of scan­dals and dis­trac­tions, this includes con­tent that con­tin­ues to tug at America’s col­lec­tive heart­strings, like cud­dly pets, depend­able dads, and tales of tri­umph over adver­si­ty.

Puppies & Kittens

With 55 mil­lion views and count­ing, it is per­haps no sur­prise that after scor­ing big with Pup­py Love in 2014, Bud­weis­er is return­ing to the pup­py well in a spot called “Lost Dog,” which the brand says “will fea­ture the world-famous Bud­weis­er Clydes­dales and their favorite com­pan­ion” and “tell an emo­tion­al sto­ry and help a pup­py who has lost his way learn the true mean­ing of friend­ship.”

Lead­ing up to the game, the brand has also released a series of GIFs, includ­ing a sad pup­py alone in the rain and Bud­weis­er is using the hash­tag #Best­Buds to push relat­ed con­tent on its social chan­nels while also ask­ing fans to help find the dog for a chance to win Super Bowl tick­ets.

“‘Pup­py Love’ was such a huge suc­cess last year on Face­book and every­where else and this year with ‘Lost Dog,’ it’s adorable, but it’s real­ly a depar­ture from the past, so I’m curi­ous to see how it will res­onate and they have a lot of mon­ey rid­ing on how cute­ness con­nects with con­sumers,” says Kristin Kovn­er, pres­i­dent of K‑Squared Strate­gies.

And con­sumers def­i­nite­ly still care about ani­mals, as inter­net domain reg­is­trar GoDad­dy learned on Jan­u­ary 27. The brand was also plan­ning to use a pup­py in its “Jour­ney Home” spot with more of a tongue-in-cheek spin on the Bud­weis­er for­mu­la that, in the end, the brand said “[spoke] to how GoDad­dy helps make busi­ness own­ers’ lives bet­ter by way of easy-to-use tech­nol­o­gy,” CMO Barb Rechter­man said in a press release. How­ev­er, after pre­view­ing the spot, the brand announced that it would not air dur­ing the Super Bowl because of neg­a­tive con­sumer reac­tion to the pup­py being sold online.

Cat food brand Friskies, how­ev­er, seems to have struck a chord as a result of a part­ner­ship with Buz­zFeed for its first game day spot, which the brand says is the “next chap­ter in the pop­u­lar Dear Kit­ten series,” a video series in which an old­er cat explains the ways of the world to a kit­ten. In this par­tic­u­lar Friskies spot, Cat pro­vides Kit­ten with a “sur­vival guide” for the Super Bowl. And, as of Jan­u­ary 27, it has 1.7 mil­lion views.

Accord­ing to the brand, a 60-sec­ond com­mer­cial will be “kit­ten-sized,” mean­ing it will air on NBC affil­i­ates in “three select cat-themed mar­kets”: Kit­ty Hawk, N.C., Los Gatos, Calif. and Pawnee, Neb.

Honoring Dads

Bud­weis­er is cer­tain­ly not the only brand to attempt to make Amer­i­ca weepy.

Auto man­u­fac­tur­er Hyundai tipped its hat to dads last year in its Dad’s Sixth Sense spot and, after a sea­son of domes­tic vio­lence scan­dals and off-the-field dis­trac­tions, quite a few oth­er brands are fol­low­ing suit in 2015 and it seems to be res­onat­ing with con­sumers already.

Toy­ota is “hon­or­ing the rela­tion­ship between dads and their chil­dren” in one of its Super Bowl spots, To Be a Dad, which has 1.8 mil­lion views so far.

“The cre­ative focus­es on dads—both promi­nent and unknown, but equal­ly extraordinary—who have con­tributed to their fam­i­lies’ lives in bold ways,” the brand says.

In addi­tion, Unilever men’s per­son­al care brand Dove Men+Care is going the dad route and “[cel­e­brat­ing] an evolved vision of masculinity…and car­ing char­ac­ter of today’s men, rec­og­niz­ing how care makes them stronger,” the brand says in a press release.

Dove’s spot, #Real­Strength, has about 660,000 views.

“We know that men today are embrac­ing their car­ing roles more than ever, and that these expe­ri­ences are ful­fill­ing and strength­en­ing them,” said Jen­nifer Brem­n­er, Unilever direc­tor of mar­ket­ing, in a state­ment. “This inspired us to share a film that shows what strength tru­ly looks like today. Espe­cial­ly at a time when fans are over­whelm­ing­ly hear­ing about phys­i­cal feats on the foot­ball field, we want­ed men (and women) to hear at least one voice say­ing, ‘Care Makes a Man Stronger.’”

Automak­er Nis­san, which is not releas­ing or teas­ing its game day spot pri­or to Feb­ru­ary 1, has instead enlist­ed “pop­u­lar YouTube con­tent cre­ators who have estab­lished audi­ences to cre­ate spe­cial pieces of con­tent that speak to the theme of #with­dad,” which it says is the over­ar­ch­ing theme of its first Super Bowl spot in near­ly 20 years.

Nis­san says the cam­paign “cel­e­brates the jour­ney that not only dads – but also moms and chil­dren – face in try­ing to make fam­i­ly a pri­or­i­ty while striv­ing to bal­ance work.”

The con­tent is curat­ed on Nissan’s YouTube chan­nel and includes Dude Perfect’s Dad Edi­tion, which has 1.3 mil­lion views to date, as well as Roman Atwood’s well-pub­li­cized Ball Prank, which has 153,000 views.

Emotional And Inspirational Stories

Microsoft show­cased an inspi­ra­tional spot last year with for­mer New Orleans Saints play­er Steve Glea­son and how tech­nol­o­gy helps him live with ALS in its Empow­er­ing spot. It has near­ly 4 mil­lion views to date.

And this is anoth­er theme many oth­er brands are touch­ing upon in 2015 as well.

In addi­tion to To Be a Dad, Toy­ota also has a pregame spot, How Great I Am, which includes Par­a­lympic medal­ist and Danc­ing with the Stars final­ist Amy Pur­dy, as well as the voice of Muham­mad Ali, and it has 1.3 mil­lion views to date. And car floor­mat com­pa­ny WeatherTech’s Amer­i­ca at Work spot cel­e­brates Amer­i­can work­ers who help the coun­try build and grow. It has 122,000 views.

For its part, Coca-Cola is tak­ing a stand against cyber­bul­lies in its #MakeI­tHap­py Super Bowl effort, which includes teas­er videos with mes­sag­ing that, “The Inter­net may nev­er be the same,” as well as thoughts on how to #MakeI­tHap­py from Kid Pres­i­dent and Dan­i­ca Patrick.

“Emo­tion and inspi­ra­tion are going to be a big theme for Super Bowl ads this year, and while some might con­sid­er this play­ing it safe, it’s an accu­rate reflec­tion of the pub­lic’s attrac­tion to feel-good con­tent,” says Tes­sa Wegert, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at Enlight­en. “Con­sid­er­ing the suc­cess of the ALS Buck­et Chal­lenge and the #Mon­tyTheP­en­guin hol­i­day spot last year, Super Bowl adver­tis­ers are smart to take the less com­pet­i­tive route and aim to pro­duce the most heart­warm­ing — rather than the fun­ni­est — ad of the bunch.”

Female Celebrities

Until this week, quick ser­vice chain Carl’s Jr. was the only brand so far to go the more tra­di­tion­al route in its sug­ges­tive spot with Char­lotte McK­in­ney, a mod­el some are tout­ing as the next Kate Upton. Although, in less than a week, the spot earned more than 5 mil­lion views on YouTube, indi­cat­ing there’s still a healthy appetite for such con­tent.

How­ev­er, Victoria’s Secret, a brand that no doubt has stronger ties to sug­ges­tive con­tent, instead teased two spots with its mod­els in head to toe foot­ball gear – includ­ing one in which the only explic­it con­tent was a reminder about Valentine’s Day – before releas­ing a more tra­di­tion­al spot with a bevy of scant­i­ly clad beau­ties.

And, rather than break­ing the Inter­net again, a (most­ly) ful­ly clothed ver­sion of “famous per­son” Kim Kar­dashi­an is schilling for T‑Mobile in a self-ref­er­en­tial spot about her own propen­si­ty for self­ies with near­ly 2.3 mil­lion views to date.

And then there’s actress, come­di­an and writer Mindy Kaling, who is mak­ing her debut for Nation­wide Insur­ance in a spot teased as #Invis­i­ble­Mindy that draws a par­al­lel between con­sumers feel­ing invis­i­ble to insur­ance com­pa­nies and Kaling’s own feel­ings of being ignored, which has about 500,000 views.

“I think half of the audi­ence is women and women don’t brands to just shrink it and pink it,” Kovn­er says. “Brands that want to reach women dur­ing this game will have to be more authen­tic in the ways they do so and they can’t sim­ply rely on the old tac­tics of over-the-top emo­tion or some of the oth­er tac­tics that we would have seen in the past with the male-ori­ent­ed game because of the trou­ble in the fall.”

Wegert also notes that the Super Bowl ad audi­ence is evolv­ing.

“With the spots now dis­trib­uted online through chan­nels like YouTube AdBlitz and NBC’s Super Bowl Tum­blr, it behooves brands to think about diver­si­fy­ing ad themes to appeal not just to the Super Bowl demo­graph­ic but a greater and pos­si­bly more dis­cern­ing audi­ence,” she adds.

Creating Brand Awareness

In 2014, GoDad­dy, which was his­tor­i­cal­ly known for its sala­cious spots, began piv­ot­ing away and show­cas­ing dif­fer­ent con­tent more focused on small busi­ness own­ers.

One of GoDaddy’s 2014 spots, Pup­pet Mas­ter, fea­tured a woman who quit her job live dur­ing the Super Bowl in order to launch a small busi­ness with a GoDad­dy web­site.

And, as not­ed, that theme of small busi­ness was one GoDad­dy planned to con­tin­ue in 2015 with Jour­ney Home and its gold­en retriev­er pup­py, Bud­dy.

“In the ear­ly years our strat­e­gy was all about real­ly brand aware­ness. I have to tell you, the Super Bowl offers an incred­i­ble plat­form in both the size of the audi­ence – 111 mil­lion peo­ple that will watch the Super Bowl – so the vol­ume you can reach with that ad is great, but the beau­ti­ful part is that they watch it for the ads and take time to watch the ads, so it’s a plat­form that real­ly works for us and the ear­ly ads as I men­tioned were more about build­ing aware­ness,” Rechter­man says. “When we entered the Super Bowl, we were a lit­tle com­pa­ny going into the Super Bowl and try­ing to sep­a­rate our­selves a bit from Bud­weis­er, who had mul­ti­ple ads and Pep­si, etc., and his­tor­i­cal­ly the ads were real­ly more about brand aware­ness.”

But, start­ing in 2014, the brand shift­ed to “more about what we do for small busi­ness own­ers,” Rechter­man says. And the 2015 spot was intend­ed “to reflect the jour­ney of the small busi­ness own­er as they build and grow it.”

While the GoDad­dy spot will not air, anoth­er effort high­light­ing small busi­ness­es from New­cas­tle Brown Ale – Band of Brands – will air, at least in the Palm Springs, Cal­i­for­nia mar­ket.

New­cas­tle asked small­er brands to join it in a crowd­fund­ed effort to get Super Bowl air time. The brand ulti­mate­ly attract­ed 37 small­er brands, which, per a press release, include: AmeriMerch.com, AprilUmbrellas.com, Arm­strong Floor­ing and Ceil­ings, Bean­i­tos Chips, Blet­tner Engi­neer­ing, Boost Mobile, Brawny Paper Tow­els , Charis­ma, Detroit Beard Col­lec­tive, Dis­trict 78, Dix­ie, East End Leisure Co., Glad­i­a­tor Garage­Works, Hel­lo Prod­ucts Oral Care, Hunt’s Toma­toes, Jack­Threads, Jock­ey, Kern Group Secu­ri­ty, Kibo Active + Leisure Wear, Krave Jerky, Las Vegas, Lee Jeans, Match.com, McClure’s Pick­les, Mr. Cheese O’s, Pol­ished Den­tal, Quilt­ed North­ern, Quinn Pop­corn, Rosari­ta Beans, RO*TEL, Sec­ond Chance Cus­tom, Sharp­er Image, Tessemae’s All-Nat­ur­al Dress­ings, The Ross Farm, Van­i­ty Fair Nap­kins, YP.com and Zen­dure Bat­ter­ies.

As of Jan­u­ary 27, the spot has about 25,000 views.

What themes do you see emerg­ing as most impact­ful in 2015?