Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost are having their minds read by Amazon Alexa in the tech giant’s latest big-ticket Super Bowl ad.

Continuing a run of annual spots featuring Hollywood A-listers (last year’s centered on Michael B. Jordan), this one sees the couple at home using Alexa Routines for various tasks. The setup, laid out as Saturday Night Live‘s Jost uses Alexa to set up an afternoon of watching football, is imagining how it would work if the artificial intelligence technology could “read your mind.” In a series of amusing bits, they surreptitiously use the smart-device to comment on the other’s morning breath, babbling and other minor annoyances. Without speaking out loud, they give commands to Alexa as rejoinders to each other.

Johansson and Jost were married in 2020 and had a baby, Cosmo, last year. (Cosmo does not appear in the ad.)

As in past years, Amazon has put a 90-second version of the ad online, while a 60-second cut will air on Sunday’s Super Bowl. NBCUniversal is broadcasting the game from LA’s SoFi Stadium between the LA Rams and Cincinnati Bengals on NBC and Telemundo and also streaming it on Peacock.

The annual blitz of advertising on the big game is looking to stage a comeback after last year’s Covid-altered edition. NBCU said last week it had sold out its inventory of ads, with many of them fetching a record price of $7 million. The company has a twin threat of the Beijing Olympics along with the Super Bowl, with the pair of mega-events likely to generate ad revenue in the month of February well above $1 billion.

The tone of the Alexa ad also appears to match the prevailing sentiment of advertisers and viewers. The 2021 game, which was played in a stadium not even half-full of fans before vaccines had started to become widely available, was marked by more somber and reflective brand pitches.

Sources