Remember watching the Super Bowl last year when that Nationwide ad came on? It featured a boy with tousled hair—so cute, right? And then the boy explained that he would never ride a bike, travel the world, or marry, because he was killed in a preventable home injury. The depressing spot generated so much backlash that the company issued a statement saying it intended "to start a conversation, not sell insurance." The ad started a conversation, for sure, getting mocked mercilessly on Twitter: @KenJennings: "The Seahawks haven't completed a pass but on the plus side I haven't killed any of my kids"; @DanGrazianoESPN: "No one in the Nationwide advertising meeting put up their hand and went, 'Let's sleep on this?' "

Despite its poor execution, the ad was part of a trend toward longer commercials that pull on our heartstrings—one that many advertisers are expected to expand on this year, making emotional appeals to our better angels and abandoning humor and sex.