Super Bowl Ad Review: Commercials Try to Shake Up Celebrity Formula (But Many Don’t)
Celebrities may no longer be winning at the Big Game.
An array of Super Bowl advertisers turned up with creative ideas that shunned the typical famous faces making quick-paced jokes in favor of concepts meant to inspire.
Nike burnished a host of female athletes backed by the Led Zeppelin chestnut “Whole Lotta Love.” Pfizer took to the Super Bowl screen to rally viewers to fight against cancer. Google tried to push consumers past their ambivalence toward artificial intelligence by showing how the technology helped a man spend meaningful children. Frito-Lay avoided the typical line of “snack-vertising” when it did an ad for Lay’s potato chips that saluted the farmers who grew the tubers that make the product every year, T-Mobile, which for years has relied A-list cameos from John Travolta and Jason Momoa, in 2025 talked about technology and utility. Rocket Cos. used a version of John Denver’s “Country Roads, Take Me Home” to talk about Americans striving for home ownership (a separate component that aimed to get the crowd at New Orleans Caesar’s Superdome to sing along, however, generated mixed results).
“I’ll admit that I got chills” from the Rocket spot, says Joey Johnson, creative director at Mother L.A.
The agency executive felt that ads that played off sentiment may have been more memorable, because it “felt like they breathed a lot more,” while many of the traditional celebrity ads were so stuffed with jokes and cameos they got waylaid from making their message stick.
To be sure, the stars still turned out, with Drew Barrymore, Orlando Bloom, Eugene Levy, Willem Dafoe, and Matthew McConaughey all doing a turn for cruise lines, pizza, beer and food delivery., Morgan Freeman joined Dan Levy and Heidi Gardner in their second Super Bowl turn for Homes.com.
It’s tough to break away from the traditional Super Bowl formula. Fans expect to be entertained, and talking about social and cultural issues can often hit a wrong note, particularly in an era when consumers are more tribal and polarized. “I think brands need to, in this specific moment, show up in a way so they are part of entertainment,” says Daniel Lobatón, chief creative officer, North America at David, an agency that has supervised many Super Bowl campaigns. “I don’t think preachiness will work.”
Ad executives felt Fox offered a somber stage on which the commercials had to play. The network kicked off the game by nodding to recent violence in New Orleans and the wildfires around Los Angeles. Add that to a citizenry that just came through a wild presidential election, and Madison Avenue may have felt the national mood wasn’t ready for more than the usual stuff.
“I think it’s kind of hard for people to come up with something that feels very timely and of the world today without rubbing anybody the wrong way,” says Johnson.
More to come…
