Well, another Super Bowl has come and gone. Overall, I think it was a good year. The game was a nail-biter, Usher’s half-time show was chicken soup for the Millennial soul, and there were some really great commercials. In my household, the Paramount+ and the Affleck Dunkin (“Ya blinded by them pinstripes!”) commercials got the most laughs. One of the higher-praised Super Bowl commercials released ahead of time came from skincare company Cetaphil. Their commercial, an ad that ran in select regions during the game, featured a dad and his Swiftie daughter bonding over football as the daughter uses Cetaphil’s makeup remover. It ends with them wearing #89 and #13 jerseys while watching the game together. It’s a sweet commercial, even if it’s not very subtle about capitalizing on the “Taylor Swift is saving father/daughter relationships!” narrative.
Turns out Cetaphil was also not very subtle about blatantly copying a TikToker’s concept. After the commercial aired, TikTok creator Sharon Mbabazi called the company out for, shall we say, “heavily basing” the ad on a series of videos that she and her stepfather had made. Basically, Sharon’s videos are set in her room where she’s applying makeup while her stepfather interrupts to update her on the latest Travis Kelce/Taylor Swift news. In the end, her stepdad and the commercial dad both embrace skincare while their daughters get into football. As Sharon puts it, ”bar for bar, it’s the same concept, same idea”.
A heartwarming Cetaphil commercial that first aired in the lead-up to the 2024 Super Bowl has drawn both praise and criticism. In the ad, called #GameTimeGlow, a father’s attempts to connect with his daughter finally take hold when the daughter, a Swiftie (who is also into skincare), takes an interest in watching football after Taylor Swift’s appearances at the Chiefs games. As they sit on the couch together, his wrist, adorned with friendship bracelets, is featured prominently.
When the commercial debuted on Friday, many Swifties and others remarked on its tear-jerking qualities and the improbability of being moved to cry by an ad for a cleanser.
Swifties praised the commercial for reflecting their own relationships with their dads. “This is exactly me and my father’s situation,” one person wrote in the YouTube comments. “I’m a huge swiftie, and he is a huge NFL fan, and I can’t even explain how much we bonded over those games.”
Over the weekend, however, some criticized the ad, with some saying the dad only connected with his daughter when she took an interest in his hobby. But the main criticism arrived when a TikTok creator made a video claiming that the skincare company stole the idea for the advertisement from her content. In Sharon Mbabazi’s original video, shared in September, the creator is doing her makeup as her stepdad reads off stats about Taylor Swift’s impact on the NFL. The creator took to TikTok to call the company out and posted videos aimed at the skincare brand.
“Y’all, Cetaphil legit copied the TikToks I made with my stepdad back in September,” she said in her video. “Like, y’all could have at least given us some credit.”
Mbabazi and her stepfather made another video where they used audio from a Euphoria scene where one of the characters asked, “Is this f-cking play about us?”
They also uploaded a third video in which they discuss the commercial, and Mbabazi’s stepfather says, “That is a beautiful story that you have in your commercial that’s going to be on the Super Bowl, but it’s our story.” He then goes on to say that Cetpahil stole the content his daughter made.
Yeah, this was pretty sh–ty of them to do. It never ceases to amaze me what companies will continue to try to get away with in this day and age. It shouldn’t, but it does. Good for Sharon and her stepdad for speaking up! They got results, too. It didn’t take long for Cetaphil to respond to the uproar:
On Sunday evening, Mbabazi uploaded a video shortly after the game began and said the company made contact with her. “Cetaphil has reached out, they’ve acknowledged all the videos, and they’ve made things right with us,” Mbabazi said. However, she and her stepfather did not go into detail about their conversations with the brand.
Heh, this makes me suspect that they knew what they were doing and had someone on duty to monitor her socials to keep track of any potential trouble. Good for Sharon and her stepdad! I hope they get compensated accordingly. You know, it’s wild – these companies pay employees good money to come up with great advertisements, yet in the end, they end up stealing other people’s original ideas and concepts. If you want to laugh at a skincare Super Bowl commercial, Michael Cera’s ad for CeraVe is pretty fun.
a lot of praise on here for cetaphil’s super bowl commercial, but tiktok user sharon mbabazi (and her step dad) are claiming the brand stole the concept from their real story/viral content. here’s one of their original tiktoks (2.6M views) and then the response to the commercial. pic.twitter.com/zsmO0wdZjW
— Rachel Karten (@milkkarten) February 10, 2024
@sharavinaaa Yesterday’s pregame chat with my stepdad he loves barging into my room. #CetaphilPartner #GameTimeGlow #CetaphilFamily #ad ♬ original sound – Sharon Mbabazi
Photos via Pinterest, Sharon Mbabazi