Advertising Alexa Super Bowl

Amazon’s Super Bowl spot features 'failed' Alexa tests by Harrison Ford, other celebs

By Kyle O'Brien, Creative Works Editor

January 30, 2019 | 3 min read

Jeff Bezos may be absent from this year’s Amazon Super Bowl spot, but there is no shortage of star power, both celebrity and celestially, in its in-game effort.

Harrison Ford in Amazon's 2019 Super Bowl spot

The 90-second spot, titled ‘Not Everything Makes the Cut’, features a set of celebrities the brand teased in what it called the ‘Amazon Beta Testing Program’. The cryptic teasers showed the likes of Harrison Ford, Forest Whitaker, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson and Nasa twins Mark and Scott Kelly looking into a camera as they opened up glowing boxes.

With the new spot, we realize what they were looking at, as the celebs found they were part of a beta test group that wear tested Alexa-enabled devices, and their tests show that not everything should be powered by Alexa.

The spot opens at Amazon Headquarters, where an employee asks the microwave, through Alexa, to heat up her pasta. Two other employees talk about how Alexa is being put into a lot of “stuff’ now, but there were plenty of “fails” along the way.

Cut to Whitaker getting ready to brush his teeth with his Alexa-enabled electric toothbrush. He says, “Alexa, play my favorite podcast.” As the podcast plays, he starts to brush, but the sound is muffled by his mouth.

Then, the employee tells of an Alexa-powered dog collar, for dogs. We’re then in the home of Ford, whose Boston Terrier is equipped with the collar – every time it barks, the collar orders more food, which irks Ford.

The Alexa hot tub proved even more dangerous. Glazer and Jacobson settle into the water and have the tub play music. The water dances like a fountain around them before it gets too intense and the water shoots them out of the hot tub like soaked rag dolls.

The employee then talks about “the incident.” Cut to a city and its night spots, with the electricity going on and off rapidly and randomly. Pan to space, where the Kelly twins are in a space station, as Alexa says “powering up, powering down” constantly as the lights on earth flash like a strobe.

The tag is, “Not everything makes the cut” as Queen’s Don’t Stop me Now plays over the end and the simple arrow brand comes on screen.

See all The Drum's Super Bowl coverage here.