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Episode 151

Distinctive or Distracting? A Super Bowl Ad Effectiveness Review

A single 30-second Super Bowl spot now costs $8 million. Factor in production, celebrities, and amplification, and total campaign costs land between $15 and $50 million. So, are the ads actually worth it?

Elena, Angela, and Rob break down this year's Super Bowl commercials through a marketing effectiveness lens. They discuss which brands nailed distinctive assets versus those that let celebrity overshadow strategy, why consistency beats spectacle, and what separates memorable ads from forgettable ones.

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Topics Covered

• [02:00] Classic TV commercial effectiveness errors in Super Bowl ads

• [06:00] Which brands executed distinctive brand assets well

• [11:00] The Pepsi polar bear debate and brand linkage

• [20:00] Patterns across effective ads: product as hero and consistency

• [28:00] Quiet winners that did real work for brands

• [32:00] Key takeaways for brands not advertising in the Super Bowl

Resources:

2026 Adwave Article

2026 Billboard Article

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

Chief Marketing Officer

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Angela Voss

Chief Executive Officer

Transcript

Elena: Hello and welcome to The Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect at Misfits and Machines.

Rob: Hello, hello.

Angela: Hello.

Elena: Hello, we're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data, research and what drives business results. Today we're talking about marketing effectiveness and the Super Bowl, which we all watched last night, or Rob didn't watch it, but he watched the ads this morning. And we gave special attention to the advertising. So I'm gonna kick us off first though, as I always do with some research, because before we get into takes on the Super Bowl ads themselves, I wanted to level set with two articles that frame up why this conversation matters. The first is titled "Everything You Need To Know About the 2026 Super Bowl." This is by Denise Warner. It was published in January. It talks about how the Super Bowl isn't just a football game.

It's a full blown cultural event in its 60th anniversary. Bad Bunny headlined the halftime show. There were massive pre-game performances, celebrity packed parties, and of course the ads. When you're sharing a stage with global music icons, pop culture moments, and one of the largest live audiences on earth, the temptation can be to chase spectacle first and strategy second. Which brings me to the second article: "How Much Does a Super Bowl Commercial Cost in 2026?", which lays out the economics for brands. A single 30-second spot now costs 8 million. And when you factor in production, celebrities and amplification, total campaign costs can land between 15 and 50 million, and that price has gone up faster than viewership. What brands are really paying for is this mass attention and the prestige of advertising in the Super Bowl.

So when you put these two articles together, we get the real question this episode is about: if you're gonna spend that much money in that high pressure, high attention moment, did the ads actually do their jobs? Of course, that is actually impossible for us to know right now, one day after the Super Bowl, which is when we're recording this, but we can still talk about some of the things we notice right away, and which ads we think will perform well in the long term from a marketing effectiveness point of view. Okay, but before we get to the end, I wanted to start with our consumer hats before we continue as marketers, which I know is hard to do, but did you have an ad that you enjoyed the most as a consumer?

Angela: Should we just go around the—

Rob: Yes. Go for it.

Angela: I know a lot of people are saying this, so I hate saying this, but I did love Anthropic's ads. They didn't land though, so I was at a Super Bowl party. I was telling these guys before we started recording, and so I had like a room of lab rats that I could watch and ask questions to and stuff, and I had done some research before, so I had seen the Anthropic ads before the actual event. But in a loud room it was hard. But I really did like those ads.

Rob: I'm actually gonna go with Hellmann's Meal Diamond. I just, it ticks so many boxes for me, even as an advertiser, but also as a consumer. So I can spread that one on a sandwich any day and devour it.

Elena: For me, I'm a sucker for the Budweiser Clydesdales in general. I just thought that ad was so good. I loved the song. It was "American Icons" with the Eagle. I loved the story. Just everything about it. I just loved it.

Angela: Yeah, I liked that one too. Rob, I just thought you'd come in with Artlist. Did you see Artlist? They were the one that did, so it was the AI company that a week before the Super Bowl made their Super Bowl spot using AI and used the characters from like the Budweiser Clydesdales in there, the little eaglets.

Rob: I watched two hours of Super Bowl commercials today, and that was not on my two hour list.

Angela: I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you. But it was so good because they used the pre-released ads to create theirs, so the polar bear was in there from Pepsi. Like it was just clever.

Rob: Alright, well I have something to look forward to.

Elena: Okay. Now we are a TV agency, which I think gives us a little bit of a license to comment on this next topic: did we see any kind of classic, just like TV commercial effectiveness errors when watching these ads?

Angela: Oh yeah. Big ones, don't you think? Like, it is a strange, like the Super Bowl is a different environment too. 'Cause you have like consumer attention on the ads that you don't typically have, but you also have a lot of Super Bowl environments where you've got potential for loud room, quote unquote failure.

Rob: I really think that people can take themselves too seriously in a venue like that. And when you're a potato chip and your product is a potato, I just can't go there with you. And I'm like, come on. And then you see the polar opposite of a great ad, which I'll talk about later with Pringles. It just puts a potato chip, like Lay's, to shame. I'm sorry.

Elena: Yeah. It's funny how like Budweiser has made it not really about the beer, like they've made it about something else. 'Cause if you make it about the beer, it's harder to probably have that emotional connection, but Lay's, they're trying to have the emotion, you're right, with the chip and the potato.

Rob: And the potato, and it's a potato guys, that there's just so much room for doing other things with a potato than that.

Elena: Yeah. Yeah. I had like a few general things I noticed, like no voiceover in a lot of the ads, like sometimes there was just none at all. A lot of not knowing who the ad was for, like remembering parts of the ad. In fact, I was, I had watched the ads earlier, but I hadn't seen the OpenAI spot. I knew there was gonna be an OpenAI spot and I don't remember seeing it. And then this morning I went and looked it up and I remember it had, I remember seeing the ad. I had no idea who it was for. I must have looked away at the end or something. There was a lot of that where I wonder what the recall's gonna be.

Angela: So many brands that did that.

Elena: And then my only other thing was, very few had like a logo or a URL on the screen for the whole ad. I noticed Ro actually did, they had their URL up. I didn't find it distracting from the ad, but very few did that. And then very, very few call to actions, which to be fair, in the Super Bowl, like you don't always need a direct call to action, but I think there were only like one or two that I counted that actually told you to do something.

Angela: Yep.

Elena: Let's talk about one of our favorite topics, distinctive brand assets. What brands do we think really executed this well and which do you think either didn't have them or sort of overshadowed their brand assets with some sort of entertainment?

Rob: Well, I already threw out Pringles. Pringles has just been a masterclass in this for years, not just this time around. And I was actually surprised they didn't double down with their distinctive assets they've used previously with the mustache, but they were still able—

Elena: Or getting your hand stuck in the Pringles can. I loved when they would do that.

Rob: It's just one of those brands where they've uncovered all of those great idiosyncrasies and you know what could be even more crazy than building a boyfriend out of Pringles and it's just another great example of product is hero. It didn't wait till the end to reveal it. It was a part of the storyline in a surprising way. They just, they do such a great job with all of their iconography, their colors. It's just so good.

And I will continue on my bandwagon, which I'll probably bring up a couple times. But the Meal Diamond is, what a distinctive asset. They, it played so well with the brand too. And I am still singing the damn song in my head. They just, there were so many good parts to that. So good. So good. So good. See what I did there?

Angela: I do, I do. I had Pringles down as well. I'll go with then since you said that one. I'll go with T-Mobile. It's not as fun, but they just use their distinctive assets really well. Like they're kind of a masterclass across their entire marketing platform.

Rob: They own that magenta.

Angela: They do.

Elena: T-Mobile down. I didn't personally love the Ritz Island spot, but I thought they did a good job with their brand colors. Even the jet ski, it was like made up of Ritz brand colors. Kinder Bueno, I've seen a lot of different feelings about their, they had the spot, they're at the chocolate bar with the alien characters and the babies, and the babies, but they did have branding just everywhere throughout the spot.

Nerds, I thought did a great job with that. Like from the very start to the end. It was super clear who it was for. And then we talked about this earlier, but a lot just had none until the end. I thought the Claude ads were particularly like you just, an OpenAI was a rough one where you just have no idea. I also noticed very few sonic logos. I, Bosch had one, like there were some I wrote down, but not enough.

Rob: Bosch was a surprise for me. Wow. First of all, I thought it was a pretty good ad. It uses the sonic branding right up front. It's an integral part of it, but their stunt got me, and I don't usually get fooled by that stuff, but I had seen the articles about Guy Fieri changing his look and I didn't connect that with the Super Bowl at all. And I thought, wow, that makes me depressed. 'Cause I'm old and he's old now and where, and that was a great play. So hook, line and sinker for me.

Angela: Yeah, agreed. I feel like talking about distinction, we have to talk about Pepsi. What did you guys think about them using the polar bear?

Elena: I'm so biased 'cause I love Ehrenberg-Bass and I've read an article that came out from them where they tested this ad. I think it was, I liked the ad as a consumer, I thought it was kind of funny, but I don't think it was a great move from a marketing effectiveness side of things. I actually found an article, Ehrenberg-Bass tested this ad. It was Cathy Nigan had done it. And they surveyed brand linkage and ad likability with 1600 respondents and they found, I guess we could, do you wanna guess, how do we think the ad did?

Angela: What are they surveying? What's the question? Just—

Elena: Brand linkage and ad likability. So who could link this ad actually to Pepsi.

Angela: I'm gonna guess, see this is where I struggle with like consumer research for Super Bowl ads because you're in such a distracted environment and you're, versus you're dedicated, I'm gonna guess the linkage is high and the likability is probably high.

Rob: To Pepsi or to Coke?

Angela: To Pepsi in this situation. Like they're clearly stealing their elements, which I have a thought on, but what do you think, Rob?

Rob: What do I think the study said?

Angela: What do you think the—

Rob: Oh, I think that if you're gonna borrow equity, yeah, which is a common tactic, and like I said, the Meal Diamond is borrowed equity, but don't buy your competitor's equity. 'Cause that's come on. You just, I mean, you're never gonna separate the polar bear from Coca-Cola. You're certainly not gonna do it in one Super Bowl spot. Kiss cam thing was great, great pop culture moment. But no, I think that backfired.

Elena: You'd be correct. They found that the linkage to Pepsi dropped. So a notable proportion of people, one fifth actually believed the ad was for Coca-Cola. So introducing the competitor, yeah, it reduced it. I don't know that one. I thought it was—

Rob: Does it almost feel mean because it's like you're taking someone's mascot over and making them do evil with it. Does it almost feel, I don't know, I'm just pontificating here.

Angela: But it brought up for me that Pepsi just doesn't have enough emotional and distinctive equity. Like they're very culture driven. They're very trendy. And I think this is signaling that a bit.

Rob: It's like if Corona Beer used a Clydesdale in it, right. It just wouldn't feel right.

Elena: No. Yeah. So I don't know. So I feel like I'm biased after seeing some of the research and hearing that, I just feel like it was kind of maybe from a marketing effectiveness side of things, maybe not the best idea, but that brings us really well into this next question, which is, 'cause that ad has been pretty praised online, it seems. Are there any ads that people are seeming to really like, are ranked highly, that you're a little bit skeptical of?

Angela: I have one that we haven't mentioned yet, which was the NFL spot. So the one that had the "You Are Special" song from Mr. Rogers. Do you guys remember that one?

Rob: I do.

Elena: Was that with the little kids and the older players? Yeah. Yeah.

Angela: Really poorly branded, super emotional and like well made. And I think a lot of viewers probably came away thinking it was a Boys and Girls Clubs of America spot and not an NFL ad, because it barely showed their logo at the very end of the spot, so it's a bummer.

Rob: Yeah, I'm gonna go after Anthropic just 'cause they definitely received a lot of positive press over their ads. And I think it was the wrong audience at the wrong time, that people don't still understand what these large language models are. And there's still so much education and magic that can be communicated so people can understand why their life can change using these technologies. And Google always does a good job of that. They make it emotional, they show practical use. But I've seen two examples now. One OpenAI, not even this ad, their old campaign basically showed that it's like you can get driving directions for a road trip, like 2004 internet use case for the technology. I think in the case of Anthropic with them trying to communicate that they're ad free is speaking to people, is speaking to a problem people don't even know they have.

I'm not even thinking of using, I'm not using this as a therapist or a sports coach. That's a good idea. Wow. I could do that. So I just think it's too early to be having that type of message strategy on the largest platform on the planet when people are still just trying to understand what AI is and how it can make their life better.

Angela: They make me laugh.

Elena: I think, yeah.

Rob: Because you are an AI savvy person who understands that everyone's wondering what the ad play is. And so I agree you watch that first, you know, I don't, oh, keep thinking da da. But the rest of the world's like, what are they even talking about?

Angela: No, you're totally right. You're—

Elena: Yeah, I think that the advertising industry and like people like us really, I really liked the ads, but you're right, Rob. I think the general person, it probably didn't. It didn't resonate as much 'cause you don't even know what Claude is maybe. Or you just started hearing—

Rob: Like what? Yeah. And OpenAI is talking about Cortex, like no one knows what the hell you're talking about. What is even OpenAI? They know ChatGPT. Like we are talking to ourselves in that industry.

Elena: Yeah, agreed. Agreed. And then there's also that element of the same thing Pepsi did where when you're so focused on the competitor—

Rob: Yeah.

Elena: Are you just building the brand of ChatGPT at the same time? My only other one I had, I also had Anthropic, I had Pepsi, but I thought the Amazon Alexa ad, which has been praised when I saw it this morning, I wondered about that one because I thought, well, is the category entry point people being afraid of AI? Like, I'm just thinking because that was the whole theme of the ad was like, your Alexa's gonna kill you. And I don't know, I mean, my grandma's pretty afraid of AI. Like I don't know if that's a good category entry point for them. It was a fun ad though, and I love Chris Hemsworth and stuff, so I liked the ad, but—

Rob: That's a really fair pushback. 'Cause in my head I liked the ad because it had Alexa throughout, but it wasn't a boring Alexa ad. It was fun and Chris is a great talent. You're making a great point though. I thought it was funny that they turned Alexa a little bit evil, but that's a little inside baseball for us that live in the world of AI, where you're like, oh, that's funny. Versus the average person's like, yeah, I'm kind of scared. That's, yeah, that's a fair point.

Elena: Well we know TV drives an impact in both the short and the long, and we've been talking about the long quite a bit. So let's talk about the short. If you had to guess, maybe Ange, we'll start with you. Which brand do you think would see the biggest short term sales spike from last night?

Angela: Yeah, I'd go with Ro, with Serena Williams. You mentioned it already. It wasn't the funniest or the most emotional ad. It was clearly built for that short term action and really clear branding, clear URL, next step. I think obviously GLP-1s are having a moment, so there was probably a lot of people out there that find themselves, quote unquote, in market, and I would guess that was a big driver of some traffic.

Rob: I wanted to faint though, when I saw that ad. I agree with you that this was the right venue to be promoting that product. There was the other one too that did a little better job in making it a pill. I think the pill's a big, big story for GLP-1. The challenge I had with it was her giving herself a shot. I was viscerally reactive to that, that like needles, shots, things, and to show her doing that made me almost, I know that sounds silly, but like I know I'm not the only one that doesn't like getting a shot.

I probably didn't need to see that. I would've maybe spent a little more time on the pill. 'Cause I think that's the big story going on right now. 'Cause they have a pill as well. There were two of them that were on there.

Elena: Oh, Hims and Hers.

Rob: No, it was the one with the parking spot. Oh yeah. Here we go. It was Wegovy. I mean, all these have such hard to remember names. Wegovy, "A New Way" and it was a pill, and they were talking about like a new way to do this and a new way to do that. And this was a new way to do it, which I thought was, it wasn't a great execution, but I do like that strategy. 'Cause I think that's one of the fears people have with that product is needles. And so that's, I think the only reason I'm with you. That was a good ad, Angie. I just, the needle thing is such a visceral thing. I didn't need to see her get a shot.

Angela: Fair enough. Yeah.

Rob: I have one that I wish would inspire a bunch of immediate response. 'Cause I thought it was the perfect audience to be doing this for, and that was Novartis and their whole idea around getting the prostate exam. The no finger prostate exam I thought was fantastic. It's the great audience to be doing this to. The "Relax Your Tight End", I don't like football, but it was funny to me. That was a good use of the personalities in there, addressing a fear.

Everyone has the finger free test. I mean, I'm sorry, the whole thing I thought was just really well played. I just wish they had a different name. All these companies need to come up with something simpler to say and so you can tell someone, no one's going, "Did you see the Novartis ad?" They're going, "Hey, did you see the Relax Your Tight End ad?" But it was a great venue. I hope they get a lot of response from that. So that'd be my vote.

Elena: I liked that spot a lot too. Yeah, I was thinking, I bet Lay's, they did that 72 hour challenge, they actually had a QR code. Not many spots, if any, did that. So I'm guessing they had a lot of immediate response. And then I was wondering too, I thought the Squarespace "Unavailable" ad where Emma Stone is trying to find her name domain, I wonder how many people went to look for that in that moment, I wondered if they had a lot of immediate response from that, which I think is a fun, didn't have a call to action, but I'll bet a lot of people did that in the moment. Like, oh, does someone own my name?

Angela: I was surprised by Coinbase, weren't you guys?

Rob: Oh, I have that one on my list to talk about. Broke my heart. No, no, no, no. Why don't we talk, let's talk about it now.

Angela: Well, it's just, it was so out of left field from the Coinbase spot that everyone talked about, that crashed the website, the QR code.

Rob: If you take the good, it's certainly their low budget approach stands out in a field of everyone spending gajillions of dollars. So that was, they were doubling down on that without any payoff before they had a really interesting payoff. The QR code, they were leading people to do something. We spent all our money on giving the money away versus the ad, like there was a reason for being.

Elena: That's a hot take, Rob. 'Cause I think the advertising industry, I think really likes that spot I was seeing this morning. It's ranked pretty high.

Rob: We like different, we like bold and I'll give them that, but they did it well last time. They didn't do it well this time.

Elena: I will say that one definitely got my attention. I was like, who is this? What's going on? The way they, so it was attention grabbing, so they were able to do that again. But I agree the context of it was not as strong as the first time. Probably so hard to repeat.

Rob: And I loved that first one. I've talked about that first one several times in this podcast. That's why, you gotta give 'em a little bit of a pass. That was genius. This just didn't have the same genius juice going.

Elena: Well, we've talked about individual ads. I wanted to zoom out a little bit. What patterns did we see across ads that worked? This could be, you know, humor, consistency, familiarity. What did we see?

Angela: What stood out to me were the brands that were being consistent. Budweiser, Pringles, T-Mobile, like, so these are the ads that we're mentioning right at the very start, just in terms of great effectiveness practice.

Rob: I think for me, the ads, if I go through almost all of them that I really liked, product is hero. If you were to, you look at obviously the Budweiser campaign, the Jurassic Park ad, which was very well done. Product is hero, fantastic. The Pringles ad, product is hero. All of these, you can just kind of go down the list and go, wow, these are, that is just a consistent factor in good ads. And that's where I was even gonna say, for me at first, the Alexa, Chris Hemsworth, that was product as villain, which was kind of an interesting take on product as hero. I really enjoy those ads just tend to ring true for me.

Elena: I noticed that a lot of the ads I liked had some sort of song and it made me think of, we had Roscoe Williamson on the podcast not too long ago and talked about the effectiveness of music and I noticed that more maybe because we had just been talking about that. This year I liked, I think there was a lot more humor versus sort of nostalgia, which I wonder, it seems like those worked a little bit more to me. I noticed there weren't as many ads that seemed sort of almost sad, like pulling on the heartstrings. It felt like there was less of that. And then one other random thing, I noticed a lot of inanimate objects like singing and I kind of liked some of those, some of those ads. So I don't know, maybe there's something to it.

Rob: Inanimate objects coming to life. Always good, right? There's good. If something good's gonna happen.

Angela: I would have to go back to prior years, but the other thing that stood out to me was a lack of strategy around category entry points. Just where I felt a lot of brands, and I get it, it's the Super Bowl, so it's time to be loud, but it's also a massive opportunity to connect your brand to real life buying moments with a really broad audience. And I mean, Kinder Bueno would be an example there where you're like, what are we talking about here? Space aliens, not really sure how this connects to my life.

Elena: I agree with the category entry points point. That's something I had written down. Just I didn't notice a whole lot of them and even some ads I thought had really great distinctive brand assets. But it's easy to sit back and critique stuff. It must probably be so difficult to hit. That's why there's so few ads where we feel like that's a perfect Super Bowl ad. It's so difficult to hit on all of that.

Rob: Yeah.

Elena: And sometimes I saw some commentary about this on LinkedIn too. It's like you wanna follow best practices as much as you can, but also you could follow all the best practices and still have a bad ad. So like at what point in the Super Bowl do you have to, you gotta make certain choices and—

Rob: Can we talk Salesforce for a minute? I'm really curious to get your guys' take on that strategy.

Angela: I gotta, I have to remind myself what Salesforce—

Rob: So they had Mr. Beast and they had this, you know, multimillion dollar challenge to find the trivia inside the ad, and you could figure it out and—

Angela: Oh, I didn't even see this one. I completely missed it.

Rob: Did you see it, Elena?

Elena: I didn't see this one.

Rob: What I loved about it is it felt reminiscent of the big interactive ads we used to have, where you almost felt like you're participating in it. Like the puppy bowls and all that kind of stuff, like making an event out of something is cool. And Mr. Beast is obviously a guy you connect with challenges and money. So that fit for me. The only thing I didn't understand about it is Salesforce is such a B2B play with larger companies versus your HubSpots. I didn't understand how the average consumer that would go on a million dollar hunt on their screen would connect with that audience. So it felt like a neat idea. It just for the wrong product for me at least. 'Cause it just seemed like you're gonna get a lot of unqualified people interacting with your brand.

Angela: Yeah, it sounds confusing.

Elena: Yeah, I think Salesforce, I really love their Einstein character and they have so many great distinctive assets. I think it seems like they've done a lot of different things recently with different celebrities and I wonder if getting back to some consistency might be helpful for them. Now to shift to the long term, I know this is a hard question, but which ad do we think people are gonna remember like months from now? We look back on the Super Bowl.

Rob: So hard.

Angela: I had to go with Xfinity. I just, I mean, you're playing on Jurassic Park. We all know that story. Like that was just for a geriatric millennial that just hit square on the head for me. I'll remember that forever.

Rob: That was really well done. I think for me, I'm gonna still go back to, and again, we're talking about longevity, like what has legs, what could you do a lot of fun things with, if they can keep doing Meal Diamond in some level. I just think that thing hits for me. I don't know what it is about the approachability. Everyone loves Neil Diamond. Even if you don't love Neil Diamond, you like Neil Diamond. It's, it just has a fun vibe. It's wholesome and you can just do that all year long. And so I think they've got a bit of an earworm that they can continue to leverage. And it's just, it's an easy handle to communicate too. It's like Neil Diamond. I get it. Okay. Got it. Funny or not funny if you don't like that, but yeah, I think it has legs.

Elena: Yeah. You really like that Hellmann's spot.

Angela: Yeah.

Rob: Really did.

Angela: How many times can we talk about that spot in one episode?

Rob: We are sponsored by Hellmann's, so—

Elena: Gosh.

Angela: Rob needs a sandwich.

Elena: Yeah. So mine, I'm probably biased, which I just love the Budweiser ads so much. I thought. I think that one's probably gonna be remembered partially because they do such a great job using their, and I know they got away from the Clydesdales for a second, but in recent history they do a good job using the Clydesdales. And I thought that song, the song they used too, like the "Furry Bird" song, it's like stuck in my head all morning.

Rob: You know why I'm not a big fan historically. Like I love the Clydesdales, like how can you not, 'cause they're beautiful horses and whatever, but some people really over index on liking that campaign, and I would really agree with you. This one for me hit better because it almost, it took itself seriously and then it didn't. And they don't always do that. Where they, this one, they blended the absurd with the emotion and it just worked for me. And when the wings span over the horse and, I just—

Angela: It's the guy at the end saying, "Son."

Rob: It's like, it's a guy, it's a horse kicking a football or something, you're like, eh, I mean, I get it, but I know it's not quite that way. This one, it's just like, it lived in a new lane for me. And so I did really like that one.

Elena: Yeah.

Angela: Elena, do you remember last year's—

Elena: That Budweiser did?

Angela: Mm-hmm.

Elena: I know—

Angela: I think, do I? Yeah. Was it the one, no, no, no. I—

Elena: Well, hey Rob, they haven't done the Clydesdales always in recent history.

Rob: Okay. All—

Angela: I think it was where a train breaks down or something and the Clydesdales bring the beer. Was that last year?

Elena: No, I don't remember.

Angela: Okay. Anyway.

Elena: I'm not gonna forget this one though. I promise next year when you ask me, I'm gonna remember this one.

Angela: There you go.

Elena: Yeah. Okay. How about quiet winners? What are some spots or one or two that aren't gonna be on these top 10 lists, but we think did real work for the brands?

Angela: Yeah. Rob took mine earlier. I said Bosch. Like just Guy versus Guy. Not the funniest, not the most viral. I don't know if it's on the list this morning or not, but that clear product integration. They're using celebrity, but it's not like overshadowing what they do. Category entry points clear. So I give them an A.

Rob: I'm going with Meta. It was great product demo. It had great use cases that were aspirational. They still got some celebrity in there with like Spike Lee and whatnot, just showing the quality of this product is gonna be really good. But then they also doubled down and they ran a couple ads, so I think they just showed up well. They're not, no one's gonna be writing home about them, but they're building a category right now, and I felt like they own that.

Elena: I agree. Mine is, we've already talked about it, but the Xfinity ad with Jurassic Park, but I think that one has gotten some praise now that I'm seeing it more online. But I thought it was just a great ad. I loved that they had the Jurassic Park soundtrack. We said it worked perfectly for like the actual solution that they have. It was funny, they had the right characters in it. I just thought that was amazing.

Angela: You know, the other thing that stands out now that you say that is there was, I, there's more familiar music than I can remember in prior years. There was just a ton of familiar music. Yeah. But this was familiar in a different way. It stood out more because it was more movie based or whatever. Just not another Bon Jovi song.

Elena: I'm telling you a lot of, I really noticed the music this year. Seemed like a lot of brands were investing in songs. Okay. Now, what surprised us the most from an effectiveness side of things, from this year's Super Bowl? This could be good or bad. What was surprising?

Angela: Mine was the bad branding. Just so many brands waiting until the last seconds of an ad to reveal who the ad's for, and they might be attempting to use distinct elements before that in the seconds leading up to the end. But geez, like we're marketers that study this stuff all the time, and if we can't grasp who it's for, certainly the common viewer isn't going to. So a lot of money being spent on seconds with no recognizable elements.

Rob: I'm going with Meta.

Elena: Yeah. I think we've talked about a couple of mine already, but the lack of category entry points I thought was interesting or maybe a future opportunity. For the most part, I liked how celebrity was used across these ads. I feel like some years, celebrity feels really overdone, but I thought that there were a lot of really good celebrity ties.

Rob: So who won the celebrity challenge here? Who was in the most Super Bowl ads? Now, I don't know if this is official number. I noticed it, but I'm actually curious. The same celebrity was in three different brands.

Elena: Man.

Angela: Oh geez.

Elena: Was it Tom Brady?

Rob: Nope.

Elena: No. Okay.

Angela: Was it, I know there was two ads for sure. What's his name in Jurassic Park? The guy with the dark— what's his name? Can't think of his name. Jeff Goldblum?

Rob: Yes.

Angela: Who's the third one?

Rob: So he was in Apartments.com, he was in Xfinity and he was in like leading off in the Wicked movie.

Angela: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Elena: In the Wicked movie.

Angela: Right.

Rob: I know. Maybe that's, that might be a cheat. What husband and wife team was high fiving during the Super Bowl?

Angela: Wait, because they were at the Super Bowl or they were—

Rob: No. 'Cause they were each in a different Super Bowl commercial. I mean, how many times can you say a married couple each did their own spot? That's bringing some money home.

Elena: They were in different commercials?

Rob: Different commercials. They weren't even used together.

Rob: Do you need a hint? Ritz crackers.

Angela: Okay, so that was, what's her name?

Elena: Johansson was in it.

Rob: There you go.

Angela: Scarlett Johansson and Colin? Yeah.

Rob: Colin Jost and Ritz.

Angela: Yep. Yep.

Elena: I didn't know she was married to Colin Jost.

Rob: And—

Elena: We're almost wrapped up here. You hang in there.

Elena: General takeaways. If you know you're a brand, not every brand's in the Super Bowl, what are just some good takeaways from these ads that we could learn from?

Angela: I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but like the Super Bowl is really the only day of the year that anyone other than marketers cares to like give mindful attention to advertising. I feel like, fair, right? And we as consumers care very, very little about brands and I mean that's what we talk about, why we talk about distinction and advertising being so important because we live in this system one mindset of decision making and we are a very distracted culture.

And we build memories through story and emotion. And a lot of what we discuss today, I think can reign true in non-Super Bowl environments where it's like we need simple message, clear product, great branding. There's a lot of ways to screw it up, but there's a lot of ways to do it really well too. And I think if we apply some of what we talked about today to just what we do on the day in and day out basis, like we're gonna win more.

Rob: If I was a brand that is not able to afford the Super Bowl, I would be very careful that I'm not using the Super Bowl as the playbook for doing commercials. 'Cause it's a very different experience when you have people that are actively watching TV commercials, and it's one of the few events where people will literally actively watch and do podcasts about them. And so because of that, there's an unfair advantage to some of the techniques that they can use and still be effective, right? And we've talked about many of those on this podcast, but it comes back to the principles of distinctive assets, product is hero. It's all those good things that you just wanna be taking a look at and not be distracted by some of the shiny objects that get introduced in a format where you can be allowed to use those, or at least it's more forgiving.

Elena: Those are perfect. I don't feel like I have anything else to add, honestly, those are great takeaways. Alright, final question. If you could give out a marketing effectiveness award to just one brand, one commercial that you thought followed the principles the best, who would it be?

Angela: This is a really hard question. I'm gonna go with Google's Gemini. We didn't talk a lot about it, but it was very clear right from the very get go who the brand was for. There was emotion to it. Do you know how long ago Loretta was? I had to look this up this morning. Remember we talked about Loretta a lot? The Gemini spot? That was 2020. Holy cow. That was a long time ago. I know. Isn't that crazy?

Elena: I love that spot.

Rob: I've already talked about Hellmann's enough, so I'm not going to, so I'm gonna do the opposite and award the worst one of the whole thing, and—

Elena: What the heck?

Angela: Rob just makes his own rules. Yeah.

Rob: Well, you guys don't want to hear me talk about Meal Hellmann's anymore. So what about Dunkin' Donuts?

Elena: That one's getting a lot of praise.

Rob: Let's talk about that for a minute. Because it should have gotten a lot of praise like it had a lot of great things that are potentially going for it, and it just felt like something happened, like it just didn't edit right. It was too much borrowed equity. There's people in there that people have no idea who they are. It was playing off of one of the greatest movies of all time. And "How About Them Nuts?" I mean, nothing landed in that commercial. It didn't.

Angela: That line did make me giggle a little bit. But that's where you've just got celebrity overshadowing, I think. I mean, how do you, there was like 54 celebrities in that spot.

Rob: Maybe I shouldn't have gone the negative route. I've already talked about that, elements enough. But it's so easy to literally Monday morning quarterback the Super Bowl spots and all of these smart folks that put all of these commercials together, I'm sure have strong PowerPoint decks that made them all make sense in the moment. And some things hit, some things don't. We've all been there.

Elena: And I think we believe for the most part, like doing a Super Bowl spot at all is a brave thing to do and it should be a good investment. You're in front of a big audience and it's emotional advertising. And I saw Mark Ritson talking about how the Super Bowl is funny because it's such a great example of this is actually how advertising works, is like these big mass moments, the emotional storytelling, which we forget that, but then we all get so excited for the Super Bowl and we comment on the ads and it's like, well, that's because most of the Super Bowl principles are marketing effectiveness principles. But anyways, I'm gonna do what Rob wouldn't do, which is I'm gonna talk about Budweiser again because I'm so obsessed with that ad. I thought it was amazing. I loved the music and the Clydesdales, and I'm not gonna say it again, but that one I would, I'm gonna award. And you know what, I'm gonna go watch it again after this because I just really liked it.

Angela: Yep. I'll send you guys Artlist. I think they're just being disruptors. That wasn't necessarily a marketing effectiveness spot, but then also I would throw out a brand that was everywhere this weekend except for the Super Bowl, and that was Chewy. They did some type of what we would call a lightning strike, but holy cow, I couldn't get away from, I heard 'em on television. No, it's like an online betting platform or something. But holy moly, they probably had to have spent more than they would've on a Super Bowl spot. They were everywhere. So perhaps to them on a big weekend of getting themselves out there without being in the Super Bowl.

Elena: Cool. I did fall asleep before the game ended though, so I didn't really see them win, but—

Rob: I fell asleep before it started, so.