Melissa McCarthy isn’t just a successful actress, comedian and producer but an eco-warrior too – at least according to a hilarious Kia commercial that aired during Super Bowl LI. Football might the focus of the Super Bowl, but the commercials that air during the game have become just as big an event. It costs brands big bucks to nab a Super Bowl advertising spot (approximately $5.5 million for a thirty-second ad in 2021) but the chance to promote a product to the millions and millions of people who watch the game often makes it a worthy investment.
Commercials featuring a famous face can be even more attention-grabbing and successful, which is why there are so many celebrities in Super Bowl ads. Back in the 1980s, Alan Alda d Atari and Demi Moore endorsed Diet Coke while the 1990s saw Miss Piggy promoting Lay’s potato chips or Donald Trump himself pushing Pizza Hut pies. In the past few years alone Super Bowl commercials have featured celebrities like Sarah Jessica Parker sipping on Stella Artois, Charlie Day proselytizing about Tide Power Pods or Lil Nas X and Sam Elliott teaming up to peddle Doritos.
Back in 2017, Melissa McCarthy staked her own place in Super Bowl advertising history when she starred in a commercial for Kia Motors broadcast during Super Bowl LI. The ad promotes the Kia Niro model – an environmentally friendly hybrid car – and casts her as an eco-warrior on a mission to save the planet. Dubbed “Hero’s Journey”, the commercial sees Melissa McCarthy traveling around in her Kia Niro while trying to address various environmental issues as Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For A Hero” plays in the background. She gets into various scrapes like getting body-slammed by a humpback while trying to save the whales or falling down a crevasse while protesting the melting of polar ice caps before the commercial concludes that “It’s hard to be an eco-warrior, but it’s easy to drive like one.” Watch the hilarious commercial below.
Melissa McCarthy and Kia seem to have kick-started a trend of celebrities promoting eco-friendly cars during the Super Bowl. The 2020 Super Bowl featured a commercial from General Motors starring basketball legend LeBron James that promoted its all-electric GMC Hummer truck while another ad saw Game Of Thrones star Maisie Williams endorse Audi’s e-tron Sportback electric car.
More recently in 2021, General Motors nabbed another Super Bowl spot with a commercial featuring comic talents Will Ferrell, Awkwafina and Kenan Thompson promoting its electric vehicle range. Whether it’s as funny as Melissa McCarthy and Kia’s Super Bowl commercial is debatable.