Transcript of Super Bowl Commercials – Do They Really Work?

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Hey, everyone. Aaron here. We've got something fun for you on this episode. We recorded our episode just before the big game where we gave our predictions and speculations about all the ads and what we thought we'd be seeing. Then we recorded a post-show just after the big game about what we actually saw and how we actually felt about it. And we were joined by a surprise guest. So stick around after the episode for the post-show. Go team. Let's get into it.

Welcome We Fixed It. You're welcome. The show where we take over companies, you come along for the ride, and we try to put them back better than we found them.

All right, let's kick off our episode with some big numbers because those Super Bowl commercials everyone's been talking about, they ain't cheap. To get our attention while we're on the couch eating nachos, maybe watching a little football, brands plunk down $8 to $10 million for 30 seconds of Super Bowl air time. That doesn't include production costs and celebrity fees, which would easily push one little commercial into tens of millions of dollars. On the plus side in the age of streaming, where it seems like there's a separate show for every person on Earth, you have communal mass viewership in real-time. People gathering together and having fun, and they're watching you on a grand stage. But that's also the problem. If anything falls flat, a lot of people are watching. You might have just pissed everyone off. Your company might look like a laughing stock. You might even damage brand forever. Is all that expense and pressure really worth it? Does it pay off? Well, that's for us to decide. In order to do this successfully, we're going to expand our team roster for today. And boy, did we. Joining Chino, Melissa, and me is Anika Kabza.

To start, Anika has advised on a number of Super Bowl campaigns over the course of her career, so that should be enough. But there's more. She's led global communications for legendary agencies like McCann and TBWA, now as founder and principal of Thru-Line Advisory. She works as a fractional Chief Communications Officer and Advisor. She works with ambitious companies seeking to elevate their visibility through strategic communications and content. Anika, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you. Tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Oh, thank you, Erin. It's great to be here with your dream team, and I'm super excited to be here on the ease of the biggest annual event in media, really the one time of the year People really want to talk about advertising, right? It's a delight. I'm thrilled to be part of the conversation. One other thing that did not make the official bio, I am originally from Seattle, Washington, so I am morally obligated to say, Go Hawks.

We'll take it. I'm glad you mentioned it. We're taping this portion before the show, so we don't know the outcome yet. We don't know the commercial outcome yet, but we will, and we'll get to that later.

No. We still have hope on all fronts for a great game and some great commercials.

It's anyone's game. Thanks, Monica. I can tell you're going to be instrumental in this conversation, and we're going to get into it with you. Let's do that. But Melissa, we got ads as entertainment. We got millions and millions of dollars on the line. What are we going to fix today?

Well, Super Bowl ads used to be a big TV buy, now they're a luxury good.

In 2010, a 30-second spot was just over $3 million. Now you're flirting with 7 to 8 million for the same 30 seconds before you've even paid Ben Affleck, shot anything, or cut the social edits. By the time you add production talent digital, a lot of products and brands are quietly putting 15 to 30 million behind what is on paper. Half a minute of attention. How do we get here? The Super Bowl is one of the last everybody in the room at once moments left in media. A hundred plus million people, same game, same three hours, no skipping. The ads stopped being just ads. We rank them, we rewatch them on YouTube, we argue about them at work on Monday or on LinkedIn. Once your media buy becomes a cultural ritual, the spreadsheets Street stops being the only voice in the room. In terms of concentrated money, this is about as intense as it gets. Broadcasters haul in something like $650 to $800 million of in-game ad revenue in a single night. Holiday and back to school might be bigger seasons overall, but nothing else forces that much budget into a tiny window at those prices.

The real question isn't, are we spending a lot? That we already know. It's, are we You're concentrating a lot of money on one very flashy coin flip? There are those storybook wins that keep CMOs coming back. Duncan is the modern poster child, one Affleck drive-through. Spot airs once, and suddenly you've got billions of impressions, a jolt of early year sales, and a whole Dunking's universe of menu items and merch. T-mobile's latest Super Bowl hit didn't just test well. It actually drove more than 10 times the engagement and the average big game ad. People actually searched, clicked, and checked them out right after it ran. This is what you want. Those are the chart agencies put in every pitch deck when they say, You deserve your own Super Bowl ad moment. But there's also the graveyard that we don't put in the deck. The crypto bull class, the overfunded apps, and the direct to consumer darlings that bought their way into the game and then quietly disappeared. Some just flamed out. Ftx reportedly paid around $6. 5 million for its '22 Super Bowl spot with Larry David, positioning itself as a future of finance. Within the same year, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with estimated liabilities in the tens of billions, and the ad is now essentially a museum piece of peak bubble energy.

When people try to measure this over time, the awkward truth is a meaningful chunk of Super Bowl spend is inefficient. Too much money in for too little lasting business out. The league and the networks have a sure thing, the advertisers are the ones gambling. That's the tension. We're going to live in and try to fix today. Super Bowl ads are more expensive, more measurable, and louder than ever. We're not just asking, was it funny? We're asking, was it worth it? What does worth it even mean when you just paid $8 million for half a minute? Here we go. Let's talk.

All valid points. Yeah. Well, I did a little bit of fun. Let's put that $8 million. We'll start with the $8 million, but not all the production budget. Let's put it into perspective. You're sitting there with your ad budget, you're trying to be responsible, you're trying to create as big a stage as you can. What could you do with that? $8 billion or $8 million You could make 8-10 billion flyers. Paper, now, don't do it. Save the trees, but you could paper the Earth with your brand messaging. You could do 20 billion impressions on Facebook. So be seen morning, noon, and night, 24/7. You could cover all of Times Square's US billboards and get the regional, but also get the PR play amplification. You could do that for two weeks. You could wrap the entire New York subway system, all the trains, put them in your branding. You could do that for a month. Or you could go on Cameo and buy 1,600 cameos of Iced Tea talking about your brand. Is the Super Bowl ad 30 seconds spot a given? No, I think you probably have to fight for that budget and fight for the allocation and make a good case for it in the room and say, Look, I stand behind it.

Like, enough people have to sign off on that, that especially for brands that haven't done it before or maybe have had a spotty track record and are doing it again, you have to have a lot of sign off and a lot of faith that what you're doing is better than the budget allocations I talked about, but also going to be substantial for your company. Anika, you've had experiences like that. You've probably fought the fight or talk companies out of it. What are those conversations like?

Absolutely. On both fronts, because the Super Bowl is not for every brand. It's so important to understand that when a brand is weighing the decision, Am I going to make this huge play or not? There are a couple of things that are important to consider. One, are you ready to go big? And is your brand prepared to live up to the moment and the opportunities that come from the single biggest moment of awareness that can be created in the global media calendar? Because the Super Bowl is singular. And so, yes, sure, there are a lot of companies that I would pony up the cash to be part of this game. Again, not every company, but there are a lot of companies out there that could do it. But it's really important to consider, is your company in the right stage of its life cycle to be ready to deliver on the uptick of likely customer acquisition, the influx of traffic? Because if you're not, then you've just wasted a whole bunch of money. The other thing is, are you prepared to really invest in making that creative moment pay off? More and more, that's not just about 30 or 60 seconds.

It's about the before, during, and after. It's about hiring a great creative agency or creative leaders who are going to swing for the fences and do something bold and bringing in the right talent. If you're not ready to step up for that, then you know what? Sit it out, and maybe next year is your year. But it's just the cards are not going to be in your favor for a successful run.

I love what you're saying here, Anika. I think it's so important to understand that you can absolutely destroy value if this spike hits your operating systems, your teams, your app, whatever it might be, and it crashes, and you're not able to live up to the promise that you've delivered in this ad. So your call centers are flooded, your app goes down, you don't actually have the merchandise at the Duncan Donuts stores, all that you said you were going to have. It really is a long game, like you said, a strategy that you have to make sure and ensure that all of those things are aligned in order to get you there. Then I think one of the biggest things, and I know Chino will jump in on this, is when you said alignment of the Super Bowl is not for everyone. I think that's so important because I have actually been at companies where we had a Super Bowl ad, and yet the ad had nothing to do with our business. It was a celebrity, you're trying to make it funny. It's supposed to be this moment. But at the end, You put your name out there and people are like, Wait, what do you do?

Right? Mm-hmm. So, Chita, what's your thoughts?

Thoughts on this. Well, I work with a ton of creative agencies, a few, who will have some Super Bowl ads, which I'm excited to see. And Anika and Melissa, I think you bring up a really big point of the why and the who. So of course, you need to make sure your brand can afford it. You can actually deliver on what you're promising. But who are you actually working with to build this ad? What is this that needs to be memorable? I think about one of my favorite Super Bowl ads of all time was the Snickers, Betty White ad, where she slapped someone because she's hungry. I don't even remember even what year that was, but it's something that permeates in my brain. When I was at the grocery store the other day, I looked at a Snickers and I thought of this ad years later. Having the right creative on this is imperative because if you're not making something that is a smart ad, strategic, making a magical moment that's trend-setting, all of the things, there's no point. You need to make sure you're partnering with the right creative agency. With that, you need to look at the talent that's there.

Have they want to can, what other things have they done? Because not every agency is super ready and worthy. The agency needs to make sure that they have the right talent there who can produce those strategic and creative and memorable ads. I think a lot of brands forget that. Of course, an agency is like, yes, if you're going to pay us 8, $10 million to build this, we can make it happen. Yes, we're going to put our name in this pitch deck. But in that RFP process, really doing your research on who is there is important, too, when you're looking at the talent of who's creating these ads. Because if the ad isn't great at the end of the day, you can spend $10 billion. It doesn't matter. If it's not a great ad, it's going to be forgotten about. If it's not true to your brand, it wasn't worth it. You could have used that money a lot other places. It's a really interesting point.

Well, it's interesting if you're saying if the company is right and if the signals are there, because I wonder how much of it is we run it through this logical vision making process and a flow chart, and we looked at external factors and all the weather conditions are right. Yes, we should do an ad versus you have a renegade CEO that says, We should have a Super Bowl commercial by now. Our competitors do, or, Where's our super? Or you have an agency that comes in and they have a pretty compelling presentation and they say, You should have a Super Bowl. The CEO is like, Yes, we should. Or you hire a hotshot CMO from another creative, from another... You steal them away from another agency, and then they're fired up and they want to do something big on a big stage for you. How much of it is instinct, which could work, it could play out in your favor, or pride, or the Just the we should factor versus like, no, we've run it through, we've done computations, we asked the binary yes, no question, and here it is, yes.

It's probably a little bit of both, Aaron. Those factors are absolutely real. There are moments where there's a CEO or a CMO who wants to be on a big stage, and perhaps wrongly, that drives the decision making. But any smart corporate leader, marketing leader, is going to look at the business rationale, because honestly, it's just too expensive to not do that. And guess what? They're going to be on the line if this decision was a big failure and didn't deliver the ROI. I think maybe one way to bring this, just to make it real, is with an example. And there's an ad that folks will see in the game this year for Rocket Mortgage and Red Fin, which is a really interesting company. Visionary CMO, Jonathan Mildon Hall, who was at Airbnb and Coca-Cola. They have an incredible ad with Lady Gaga, who is covering the iconic Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood song by Mr. Rogers. It's stirring and beautiful. I love it. But beyond just the creative and having Gaga, which that's thumbs up all around, I think it is brilliant from a business standpoint for a couple of reasons. First of all, Rocket acquired Red Fin in mid-2025.

Rocket is a mortgage company. Redfin is now part of their portfolio, and they are creating a more holistic end-to-end experience for home buyers. So yes, you can find a home on Redfin, and then you can purchase that home and then finance it through Rocket. But most people don't know that Red Fin is now part of Rocket. So at the Super Bowl, they are going to make that link abundantly clear to a huge potential audience. So there's a real business case for why now, why this year because of that acquisition. So that's number one. Number two, you've got, I think, a moment in culture where the idea of neighbors and knowing our neighbors and having a little bit more humanity, I think, really resonates with so many of us culturally. And we could all use a little hope. We could all use a reminder of going back to our collective humanity. And so I think that creative choice, which surely has been in the works for a while, is just so resonant. And then you have an incredible creative talent in Lady Gaga who's going to give this maximum exposure. I just think it is, yes, it's big, it's celebrity, it's beautiful, it's craft, but it is incredibly smart from the business standpoint and from a people and culture standpoint, the way Jonathan Mildon Hall revealed this, they had a big corporate town hall where they screen this ad, I think probably is part of a bigger corporate event, but they had a big jambourie, screened it for everyone, talked to their entire employee base about the rationale for this and the strategic thinking behind the brand platform.

That whole workforce is getting the inside track on why they made this decision. So they're not just going to see a very expensive ad in the Super Bowl. They're going to understand, yes, you know what? We understand our company has made this bet because it's actually going to make our jobs as salespeople, as customer service reps easier. I think that's one way of understanding a plus example of why this works.

Yeah. I love that. Yeah, same. Well, I was just going to say it takes a lot of restraint and a lot of knowing your brand and a lot of critical thinking and a lot of trust to do something like that because it's going to air right after a chip commercial where a baby runs up on a coffee table and steals the last chip. Then what's next? You're going to come with this moment of humanity and unite us all together. It better be good.

I think this is the positive side of the planning, the alignment, all the things.

I love, Anika, what you were describing here with this, because I think on the opposite end, the The cautionary tale is Super Bowl ads can be a terrible misfit for fragile or unproven businesses, like early stage launches without reliable product market fit, crypto style bubbles, all the things we've It's a scene where trust is shaky or cash burning companies that can't really trace their revenue payback on a very expensive awareness campaign. If your unit economics, your retention, your customer experience, your operations aren't already solid. The Super Bowl just amplifies those weaknesses in front of 100 million people, and so you'll fall flat. This is a great example, Anika, of where you're seeing what that journey can look like and where you can really be very thoughtful and intentional about it, build up to it. I know that this whole week, there's been a lot of leaks of Lady Gaga singing the song, and there's all this talk about it. For you to bring that up is just a wonderful thing because she's getting a whole bunch of awareness from fans about, Oh, why is she singing that song? That's a great song. It comes to a time in our country where taking care of your neighbors is important.

It's just a wonderful thing to share that. Think about how you actually put together a plan and execute it and actually get the buy-in from the people in the company is going to make it so much easier for them to deliver on that promise.

I think just adding to that, too, is really important to know I know, it's that buy-in from the actual company. Whether that's the brand and or the creative agency that we're at that screening, because we also have to take into account the market right now. There's a lot of layoffs happening. $8 million. If you're I'm watching an ad and two months ago, everybody was laid off, it's like, Where was the money for that? Did we just let go of 100 people to afford this? Being able to explain that rationale is really important. I think, Anika, it's a really great example because they have checked the boxes, they have done something right, and I'm excited to see what happens on Tuesday after all of the excitement on the ROI there. But I do think it's important to talk about what it is in this and looking at as a brand, your own internal economics within in the market. If you have been laying people off. Maybe this isn't the time to be running an $8 million ad, as you were mentioning, Melissa, where you're in a fragile state.

But being able to sell your idea to your people will also be a really great case study for how you can sell it to the market.

So again, a win-win-win on that ad just because they have done the checks and balances and they've allowed their internal teams to understand what is happening there so that in a few months, it's making their lives easier. Everyone has had that buy-in versus on the flip side where people don't do that and they just couldn't afford it at the end of the day. People have to get let go.

From a strategic lens, it's really important that a company knows where they are in their life cycle. To your point, companies go through ups and downs and things like that. The tone and being deaf to what they're going through, if they just had layoffs the last quarter, if they've had to shift their market strategy, whatever it might be, is very important to make sure that, again, alignment to me is so important, and to be very careful and cognizant of what you're saying to your teams as well as to your loyal customers as well. Because sometimes I also think the ads try to grab customers that aren't really their demographic. You understand the customer segmentation and you're going for a new segment.

Well, how does that make the loyalists feel?

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Yeah, for sure. And you also have to look at the programming landscape and understand not just what your competitors might be doing or your category might be doing, but what the sequencing of ads looks like in the other ads in the market. Because like Anaga, we were saying, you can do these bold message statements, and if it works, it cuts through. If there's four of them in a row, people feel preached to. They feel like, Wait, are we here to be entertained and watch football? Why are we getting so fired up about something right now? I want the baby on the coffee table. I want the grandma arm wrestling the grandson for a bag of cookies. It turns out that grandma's played by John Seena. I don't know. You know what I mean? It's a rare occasion where the stakes are not just your own brand and your own company and how you come across, but who played before you, who played after you, how the game's going. If it's a terrible game with no action, I guess maybe that's a good chance to stand out. Or maybe people are just less invested as a whole and you don't get the buy-in that you wanted.

Stakes are just higher and higher.

Absolutely. It's the moment where you really want to invest in having a reason to be there and having a strong creative idea because falling flat is just... You're just doing yourself a disservice. There's a brand, a Chinese e-commerce brand that you all may remember, Taimu, that a couple of years ago bought six Super Bowl spots. It was It was unbelievable. And they ran the same terrible creative in six Super Bowl spots. Over and over and over again. I remember watching it and just thinking, Wait, it's the same. They're running the same spot, and sometimes that happens twice. An advertiser will get a bonus. No, it just kept going, and it was terrible. But it did a short term job of raising awareness of a brand that really was still new to a lot of American consumers. They did, I mean, as terrible as the ad was, it did accomplish awareness. But over the long run, I mean, they got awareness. But the conversation around that brand was just about how much everybody hated the ads and was annoyed by the brand. And then when you dug in They had terrible customer service reviews and product quality reviews online.

They made a massive, massive media investment. I mean, it's hard to imagine a company... I mean, very few companies have invested that much in terms of six spots over the course of the game. But over the long run, I think that was just a real missed opportunity. They could have done, even with a little investment, just more creatively to to tell a more compelling story. Then to the earlier conversation, having the infrastructure in place to deliver on what they promise, which is shop like a billionaire, right? Like, get low prices, but get all the things at your disposal. That's one that is just an interesting one. Now, today, I think they've been wiped off the map in the US because of tariff. So RIP, Camu. Well, and it makes it for a viral moment, though.

They become a mean company, and definitely has. We've actually had a podcast about them before.

I think that I I love what you say also in terms of really understanding what that investment looks like and feels like for the person sitting and watching in the audience.

The other thing I like is when companies companies don't take themselves too seriously, and they admit. I can't remember who it was last year, but I think it was John Krasinski that was the spokesperson for whatever company it was, but they were like, We can't afford it. We're running. They ran his ad before the Super Bowl started. They're like, You're not going to see us until the end. Then they did a little teaser, and then at the end, after the Super Bowl, they ran his ads. It was funny, as they said, We can't afford to play during the Super Bowl, but we hope you'll tune in, or whatever it was. But I think that understanding where you fall in the whole atmosphere of Super Bowl ads is very important. To your point, tune, come on. That's not even the cheap shop for e-commerce for everything. Really, is this the place where you want to look cheap as well? Again, still, I mean.

Yeah, it's such an interesting dynamic because people want different things. They all want successful outcomes. But if you're on the agency side, you've got the client saying, put the logo on everyone's face. Make sure that the name is repeated, make sure they know the name of the new product extension that's out. If you're on the agency side, you want to do something avant-garde. I mean, Super Bowl commercials are forever. You want to make your market history. Maybe it's like, you don't even show the logo, and they're like, no. Then you have the financial responsibility side of it where it's do no harm. Don't upset the brand. Don't change expectations. Just layer on expectations. Don't take us off course. Be safe. Like I said, we know the Super Bowl ad playbook. It's a celebrity pair that's unexpected. It's a reunion of a sitcom. It's a grandma, it's a baby, it's a dog. So play along this established lines, and maybe that isn't right for your brand or right for your company. It's all those different factors competing against each other. But it's like, in Hollywood, they say, even if you make a bad movie, but you make it to theaters, you've won.

That's a big accomplishment. It's like if you make a Super Bowl commercial, and even if it's regardless of how it's received, as long as you didn't make everyone feel bad about themselves or say something extraordinarily racist or something, If it's a mid-tempo ad and it just does what it does, you've maybe made your career on it, or you've at least not taken the brand down, and you've boosted sales a little bit, so maybe it did what it was supposed to do.

You know what I'm I guess I would ask you, Erin and Anika, about this, though. What is the definition of ROI on an ad like that? When you're talking to an agency, when you're doing those types of things, what are you really...

Because if you're spending $8 million, it's not really good enough to just stay where you're at.

Why the heck would you do that? You should have invested that into $8 million decals that people could put on their computers. I'm just wondering, in your perspective, when you're talking to an agency, when you're talking to the board, when you're sitting at the C-suite table and you're trying to get an ad through, what are you you're hoping the returns are going to look like?

First of all, it will be different for every brand because every brand has different business goals and objectives, especially in looking at an event like the Super Bowl. But there are some measures that one would likely consider, obviously, sheer brand awareness. For example, if you're a newer brand that is looking to scale, if you're a brand that is maybe a few years old, has built the infrastructure, is really starting to hit its stride, and is ready to take a giant leap forward, you might look at the ROI in terms of your overall brand, unaided brand awareness. The likelihood that you're going to make a gigantic leap forward by being in an event like the Super Bowl is quite high. And so there are measures like that. Customer acquisition, also driving down. It sounds counterintuitive, right? Because Super Bowl commercials are, of course, so expensive for all the reasons we've discussed. But if you're looking at it in the context of a larger holistic marketing program, not just those 30 or 60 seconds, but you're building out a more considered long-term program with that as your anchor point, and you Whether that is for a quarter or the entire year, the ROI on that actually can make a lot of sense because the audience that you're going to reach is so significant.

It can really drive down the cost of customer acquisition over time. It sounds bananas, but it's the truth. Aaron, I don't know if there are any other ads that you have from your experience or observations.

Yeah, I was just going to say that there's two types of metrics you can look at. One would be if it's a product tease or a product launch and it's Cheetos, Lime Supreme or whatever, and you just announced it and everyone gets a bag, you can for sure look at quantitative metrics the next day and then look at sales trends over time and point back directly to that ad as the trajectory point. But if you're an insurance company or you're even Budweiser does the recurring every year ads, it's more of the halo effect of, are we staying on recognition on a big stage? Are we adding to the narrative? Are we building on last year? But it's not the point of purchase sale necessarily dollar for dollar. It's more, are we elevating our brand? Are we elevating our market share? Are we doing all the things we should be doing for a company of our size? And are we executing well on them and fulfilling the promise that that we set out, too. That's what I'd add is point of purchase sale the next day, and did we uplift our brand?

I'm also hearing you say that, again, it's about understanding where you are. It makes the most sense for companies that are at specific inflection points in their journey as a company. A scale up brand that's ready to jump from maybe regional to national stage. For an awareness perspective, a category challenger with real distribution, trying to break top of mind, or even an incumbent defending their share of the business from a disruptive rival. Really establishing who they are. I know that that is something that makes a lot of sense to me in terms of those ads, being a company in that scenario.

It's just scary that there are still so many companies that invest in this, and it's like a rescue mission, trying to…

Then in nine months, they're bankrupt.

It's true. There's also sometimes the bandwagon effect a little bit. It feels like almost every year, there's a theme to the types of advertisers that all of a sudden rush into the game. This year, AI companies, it's like the AI bowl. We're going to see a lot of ads either from Anthropic and Claude, OpenAI, Google is focusing on Gemini, and then other companies that are touting their AI tools. A few years ago, there was a big focus on pharmaceutical companies coming out of COVID and health care. Then, of course, as we all know and fondly remember, the great crypto bull. Even going way back, the dot-com goal, a billion years ago, where all of these dot-coms that had loads of funding got into the game.

It's interesting, too, because we're talking about this cycle of that competition. We had the zeitgeist of whatever the year. This is the AI boom, dark com boom in previous years.

But- So much money- Does it make sense?

Does your message get lost in the sauce?

That's the reason for market.

Trying to get the market share. But if everybody's doing it, do you guide You miss. I wonder, Angela, from your perspective, would it be more strategic? For example, maybe you don't spend $8 million, maybe it's $2 million on the advert before saying, Listen, maybe it is a little... We couldn't afford to hear, but remember us here and making sure you padded around the Super Bowl hotspot, because if everybody's there, I don't necessarily want to be in that same conversation where my name and brand gets lost in all of that. So Seriously, you have to get your take on that, too.

This year, Roe is in, which is just interesting. It's the competitive set and understanding the big picture is also always something to look It's interesting, too, because we talk about the psychology of that competition.

We have the zeitgeist of whatever the year, this is the AI boom, dot-com boom in previous years. But does it make sense? Does your message get lost in the sauce, trying to get the market share? But if everybody's doing it, do you miss? I wonder, Anika, from your perspective, would it be more strategic? For example, maybe you don't spend $8 million, maybe it's $2 million on the ad right before saying, Listen, maybe it is a little... We couldn't afford it here, but remember us here and making sure that you're padding around the Super Bowl ad spot, because if everybody's there, I don't necessarily want to be in that same conversation where my name and brand gets lost in all of that. Curious to get your take on that, too.

Yeah, I think that's such a good point, and I agree. Research shows that when lots of brands, especially from, let's say, just a category that is less familiar When a bunch of brands in the same category show up, people get confused. They can't remember which was which. The impact of that investment for all of those brands is diluted. I think it's a really smart point. If everyone in the automotive category or everybody in AI is, and you know what? Maybe you're going to sit this one out and zig where others are zagging. It could be a much better strategy.

I also think that there's that halo effect in the sense that if you see an ad go viral, I love those companies that jump on that and then created a response. Do you know what I mean? In their own way. This is the thing that bothers me the most about Super Bowl ads, is that it is hard to discern sometimes what the company does You'll be like, Oh, they had this spokesperson because I love this actor, or I love this athlete, or whoever it might be. It was, let's say, for weight loss drugs. But now I I can't remember. Was it Roe? Was it him and hers? Who was that? But you know the sense of it. To me, that's not great.

You're not getting what you want me to...

You want me to go to the Ro website, and that's what you want. I think that that connection, too, is still a little foggy sometimes, even when you get the best people. I mean, that's where Duncan killed it, because they got a Boston voice. They got Tom braided. They got the Boston voice of where Duncan is located. You know what I mean? You immediately were like, Oh, okay, Duncan, versus like, Oh, it was a coffee place. Was it Dutch Brothers or was it Starbucks? I don't remember. His favorite coffee is something. I think that having that really tight connection is hard. I mean, it's a challenge for agencies and CMOs alike, but that is definitely... When you think about the culture of who's sitting around, you're watching the ads, there's stuff going on, you're eating, you're paying attention, you're not paying attention. You really have to make that connection and make it make sense to the person sitting in the audience.

Yeah. Well, Melissa, with the Duncan, if you got bought in on it, it wasn't just go buy a Duncan tomorrow, which, of course, they want you to do, but there was more. There was a 22-minute mini-movie, which I watched, and it was great. You could get immersed in that world, and they had more content for you, and they built off of it, and they're still playing the Duncan thing. Super Bowl ads are not a fixed time-coded thing anymore. They can be as immersive or as multi-layered omnichannel campaign as a brand wants it to, and they can last as long as they want it to. It doesn't even have to start at the ad. They could tease. Now, there's a teaser of the ad and a teaser of the teaser. Like you said, a secret celebrity doing some PR stunt. Why are they carrying their groceries upside down and they're falling on the street? I guess they're losing their faculty. No, they're not. It's just a stunt. It grows and it's not a 32nd, it's not a 60. It grows and grows. It can set brands up. I mean, really, for a good ad, it could set brands up on a three-year trajectory.

Exactly. I'm curious, too, about call to action, specifically as making sure that that brand awareness is there and you're not mixing it up with another brand. I have started to see a lot more brands using QR codes. Again, don't love it. Post-covid era, you don't love scanning a QR code in a menu. But I wonder when you're spending $8 million on an ad, I really don't want someone to mistake this and maybe almost forcing that fit and driving that action with the QR code. I wonder if that's something we're going to see more because at Costco, as I've been looking at different TVs, I've found certain brands actually will push out ads with QR codes, which is something I've not really experienced. I'm seeing that more and more from different ads I've been watching, and I'm very curious to see if that's something that's going to continue to ensure that brand recognition is there. I'm curious to get your take on that, Anika, Erin, and Melissa.

Look, to the point of ROI and ensuring that we've got data and then metrics where we can track the impact. Every brand is looking for more accountability. It's possible. It'll be interesting to see if any of that pops up on Sunday. But even if it's not a QR code, I predict we'll see different ways to engage in different calls to action, whether that's going to a website or it's searching something on TikTok or whatever it may be. That is now part of the Super Bowl playbook because the brands who are making these investments, they want the data. They want to drive the engagement and the traffic. They want to capture that audience. They want to start either deepening or building a relationship with a widely expanded customer base. I think there's no doubt that we'll see different forms of that manifesting in the big game.

Thanks, Anika. If you're a company that's never done an ad, and let's say the markers are there and you're seemingly ready to play on the big stage, do you use that moment to say, get to know us, here's who we are, or do you use that moment to do a needle drop? Like, look, we just did. We just changed everything you thought about everything. Boom. There's no more fees on anything we do. Is that too much too soon, or do you use it just for the recognition, or what's the responsible and the creative angle? What do you do in that situation? You're not bud-wise or you don't get four per game and all the background sign. You got one shot. What are you going to do?

Go big. I think there are brands that have been really successful over time. The things that we remember, the things that do become those cultural touchstones and the things that are talked about the next day, it's when there's something that actually breaks from the Super Bowl playbook. I think there is value to using that moment to either reintroduce yourself to surprise that audience. There's got to be a real reason for that. Otherwise, you're just doing something random that is not going to connect back to your brand? I think about a few years ago, this was maybe one example from the crypto bull that was successful. But do you remember that Coinbase Coinbase had that app where it was just the floating QR code, and everyone was just like, What is happening on my screen? Why is there a floating QR code? Today, Coinbase is still active around... They are one of the companies that has survived and thrived. I mean, it got everybody in America picking up their phones and pointing at that QR code and signing up for Coinbase. I think I did it during the game. They are a brand that had a real reason.

Yes, there was awareness, but there was a real reason to, Okay, hey, here's what we're doing. We're doing something bold and totally different. It really worked for them. So, yeah, I mean, you're in the biggest stage. Don't be afraid to swing for the fences.

True. And that one cost about a dollar to produce, it looked like.

Exactly. They were able to stay on the low end of the with that gem, that's for sure.

Yeah, a summer intern was in charge.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, we have ideas. We'll fix this situation. We're going to help companies navigate whether they should be in the game, whether they should keep coming back, whether it's doing what they intended for it to do. If they know their company well, really understand what they're all about, you don't want to learn something about your company negatively for the first time when it's playing out on a stage that size. Really do something that's... Well, we've said this before, but do something that's true to your brand and your company, but do it loudly in a participatory way where people want what you're talking about. Do the mic drop. I'm all in favor for that. Be bold. Also, you have to, I said earlier, but you have to look at not just your head to ad competitors, but look at what does the day of name it look like? What does the programming look like? Maybe plan for contingencies. If the game is going bad, what mood are people going to be in? Does our ad play in that format? If people are in a great mood, is it going to play enough? Test it. I love the town hall or the roadshow or something.

Besides just like, here's our teaser, campaign, and then it's too late, you have an opportunity to really craft it. Not to the point where you've sucked all the creative life out of it, but to the point where you're like, Look, we've shown this every number of different ways. People love this. We can't get this out of the house enough. If you don't belong there, regardless of whether you have the money, if you have new money and you're flashing it around, maybe hold on to it for a little while and see if you last the year. Be a little bit responsible, fiscally responsible. But even if you've never had an ad before and all the markers are there and the signals are there and your competitors are holding back, it's not a point of pride and a point of contention. We've got to do this because we just We got to put our flag in the sand type of thing. It's like, no, we belong at the Super Bowl. Our brand definitely should be there. We're in league with the other companies that are there. We got something to say. We got interesting creative. We got a powerful message.

We can quantify the results one way or another. Yeah, let's go. Let's do this ad. We're all in. We're bought in. Melissa, if we put that all together, and that's our advice to the company, the next company up that's looking at next year's Super Bowl ads? Did we fix their situation?

I think we did. I think we brought awareness to the topic of Super Bowl ads. I think there's a few things I would say, only invest in buy an ad when the rest of the machine is already working, meaning your operations, you understand who your customers are, and you understand who the audience is, and you have a product and services that can handle that national spotlight and can handle it. Because you want to make sure that you can deliver on those promises that you are sharing in these ads. I'd also say, and I think you might have mentioned this, but making that Super Bowl at the center of a larger campaign in a very intentional campaign, not just a 30-second event, I think is important. Lastly, but very importantly, is being intentional and having true alignment. So understanding tone, understanding what else is going in the company, understand what's going on in the economy, so to speak, so that you're making sure that you're not going to be the next company canceled.

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Thanks, Melissa. Chino, did we help Cautionary tales that are planning for next year? Do we just give them the rationale to go spend elsewhere? And then the good companies that have something to say, do we give them the go ahead? Are they amped up now? Did we fix it?

I think so. I think, again, knowing what that message that you're trying to share and making sure that it's a strategic one, take the emotions out of it, is I think, the big takeaway from this conversation for me on the Super Bowl. You're never going to have as many eyeballs as you will on that moment. So make it count. Don't be afraid to be bold. Get your teams around it. Do as much testing. Hire on a cloud to make sure you're crossing all the boxes there. But I think if you can check yes to all of these precursor questions, go for it. Do it next year.

She go and her Super Bowl playbook.

We love a playbook.

Anika, did we fix the situation? Do they understand how to play now? If they If they've never done an ad, if they did an ad that flopped, if they want to come back and try again, do we put them in a better place than they started before this episode?

We fixed it. We fixed it. I think companies need to take a hard look at themselves and really ask the question, is this the right moment for us? Are we ready to play? If you can look at all of those factors and come to the smart decision, yes. Then I think we've had a great discussion about all of the considerations, get a great creative agency partner. Think about the end-to-end of it all and build around it. It's not just those 30 or 60 seconds. It's so much more. Then to the point of delivering on the product, delivering on the operations, and really delivering for your people and ensuring the people in that company understand the why and can use that Super Bowl moment as a rallying cry and something positive to take for it. I think we can do all those things. Yeah, we've fixed it. Companies who've listened, hopefully, they know when they should take the field and when they should stay on the sidelines.

I love that. Thank you. That's a breakdown for us. I'll take it. Go team.

Go team.

Well, I think that's going to wrap up our episode. Before we go, I'd like to give one more big thanks to Anika Kovzev. One more time for joining us. This would not have been the same without you here. How can everyone keep up with what you're doing now?

Oh, that's so kind. You can find me on LinkedIn, Anika Kovzev on LinkedIn. I'm visible there, so please connect with me.

Fantastic. Please do. Yeah. And thanks, Anika. Thanks, Chino and Melissa. And we're back. We talked to you pregame, and this is our postgame analysis. Not of the football. The game was fine. Let's dig into the commercials. We're, of course, not the only ones talking about this year's ads, but we have our own take on things. You're going to want to hear this. Joining Melissa and me for the postgame rundown is Anika Khabzev. Anika has advised on a number of Super Bowl campaigns over the course of her career. She's led global communications for storied agencies like McCann and TBWA. Now as founder and principal of Thru-Line Advisory, she works as a fractional Chief Communications Officer and Advisor, helping brands to elevate their visibility through strategic strategic communications and content. Welcome, Anika.

Thank you. Great to be with you.

We're so happy to have you. We're also happy to be joined by Amelia Renshaw, Head of Strategy at Lucky Generals, New York. Amelia is a dynamic strategic leader with deep knowledge of brand, comms, social data, and content strategy. She creates impactful and transformative brand experiences by helping clients uncover the meaningful role for their brand to play in culture and their consumers' lives. Throughout her career, Amelia has spearheaded brand positioning, award-winning creative campaigns, and comms thinking to help turn ambition into action for brands such as Universal, which comes into play today, Ally, Google, Peloton, Pinterest, and Girls Who Code, among others. Amelia, welcome to our little after-party.

Hello. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

We're so glad to have you here. Okay, well, let's get into it. What was the worst ad? No, I'm just kidding. But what were we seeing this year in terms of running themes and what worked well? Let's start there.

Well, I think that one of the things I was really proud of us is that we called it. I think we actually thought that there were going to be a lot of AI-driven ads and talking about AI companies, so like Gemini, Amazon Alexa, OpenAI, Claude, et cetera, as well as AI use within ads. There were a lot of ads on sports betting, which was interesting given that whole ecosystem and what's going on there. Then there was still a lot of celebrity mixed ads, a lot of celebrity deep into ads. I felt like the emotional anchor ads were fewer this year, but they were really, really powerful. I know, Anika, you brought up one that was beautiful was the Red Fin Rocket Mortgage, one with was beautifully done. The surprise for me that really touched me, I think I might have even teared up, was the Lay's potato farmer retirement one. I was like, What? Then at the end of the Super Bowl, them having the QR codes. We talked about QR codes and Coinbase and things like that, and that Lay's had, If you want potato chips in 72 hours, scan this code. I thought it was interesting.

I'd love to hear… You guys are all professionals on this. I'm the person that is watching it, and then I'm thinking, Will I actually buy that? Also, Anika, I think you mentioned this as well, is a lot of the health types of things. I thought some of those were great. Liquid IV, all the different types of things, like look at your pee.

I thought that was good.

Well, let's talk about the Lays one real quick because I could tee up a little bit of a topic conversation. Lays had done a study recently in 2025, I think, where they said that 40% of those who participated in the study, consumers, did not connect back the fact that Lays are potato chips and that they come from potatoes. So they made it very abundantly clear that what you're eating, what you're crunching down on is a potato, and it comes from a field, and it comes from a farmer. So Leys and elsewhere, Who did well doing either a reframing or here's what you think you know us for, and we're going to clear some stuff up? Like Rocket Mortgage, for example, was a underutilized asset in our portfolio, and then they were able to connect it and say, You should know this about us. Who do you think did that well in terms of reframing the dialog around their brand?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think, touching on what you were saying, Melissa, about just the onslaught of AI players in the space this year it feeling a little bit like a changing of the guard of just the brands that show up at the Super Bowl. I think that Claude did a really great job with a tough challenge. Obviously, they are facing the same challenges that all of these other AI brands are facing of just making people feel comfortable using their product, which some did better than others. But I think it was a really interesting take on it. I think they were the first brand that I saw really tap into that human insight that there's a lot of fear around using these products. You want to use them if you're afraid that they're going to be selling you something or using your data. I think of all of the players in the AI space, I think that they really won the night. It was an interesting reframing on what the AI space can really offer.

I think that's such a good point, Amelia. I think also one thing that Claude did so well is they won the night when it comes to the AI players, but they also won the pregame because they dropped their ads a couple of days before the game, and they were poking at their biggest competitor in the space, OpenAI and ChatGPT, and they got Sam Altman all fired up. By taking a pretty bold creative mood, not being afraid to throw some punches as a challenger brand, I think they absolutely dominated in the pre-game conversation, and then they really delivered on it in the game.

Yeah, I like that. Also, for me, the thing that I liked is to understand how AI can be used in a way that isn't threatening, because I think a lot of people are scared of AI, right? For me, one of the ads that I felt like really did a great job of that was Codex Open AI, which was the you can just build things. Remember, they started with the little kid making something and it went on and on. Then at the end, it was like, you can build things. I thought that makes AI feel like a partnership and a tool, less of a threat. I felt like there was some creepy AI stuff, the vodka, I was like, I'm not sure that I really like the robotic vodka. That to me was like, Erin and I have met an incredible founder for robotics, and he was mind-blowing. He made all of us rethink what our purpose in life. But that just felt creepy, a little bit cringe. I felt like there were moments, even the Duncan commercial with the The aging. The Goodwill, Duncan, instead of goodwill. I thought, eeu, I don't know that I like that all of those guys are like, I didn't like that.

It was funny because I asked a couple of people, and I saw online that there was some backlash to that. They liked the idea of nostalgia, the '90s, friends, all that stuff, but it felt a little weird that it went that direction instead of maybe just having them in it as they are today.

I think you touch on something really interesting there, too, because I think on one hand, you see OpenAI telling this story about the history, but also the inevitability of this tech innovation in a really beautifully-produced ad, I might add. But then at the end of the night, you're also faced with the reality of a lot of this AI slop and the negative effects of AI. I think that that balance was a really interesting dynamic throughout the entire night. It will be interesting to see what some of these brands do after the big game and how they continue to counteract that perception moving forward.

Yeah, and that's what I liked about Claude is they made it relatable. They used terms I think people were familiar with. They used simplified interfaces. They didn't overcomplicate the situation. I'm all for taking another brand's thunder and stealing it, especially on a stage as big as that. Hello, Pepsi. We could talk about that, too. But with Claude, a couple of things I was thinking about is, are they trying to solve, number one, for a problem that doesn't quite exist yet? Because do consumers have ad fatigue within their AI tools, or is that just a new emerging concept? Are they trying to solve for something that isn't to a pain point where people are willing to change their behavior? If they're saying, no ads here, is that a sustainable business model? If they have to walk it back in six months from now and realize in order to be viable, they've got to have ads like everyone. Well, now ads are the standard across AI platforms, and they're the holdout. They're going to have to walk that back and reverse course. Those are the two things in my mind. Great. Make a bold statement, make it as big as you want.

But we're all going to remember what you said here.

Absolutely.

The point of delivering, and we had spoken about this on the earlier episode, the importance of delivering on the promises you make in the Super Bowl, so very important. Which brings me to another ad from last night, which got a lot of traction and then attention for all the wrong things, the AI. Com ad, the go Claim your domain, AI. Com, and then the site crashed. I know this not just from the coverage, but from somebody at my Super Bowl party who actually went on to try and claim his domain and then could not do or his site, and he couldn't do it. I think, yeah, you're on the world's biggest media stage. It's important to deliver on the promises over the long term and then operationally be sure that your company is ready and prepared to deal with the traffic, the onslaught, the whole thing when you have the world's attention.

Amelia, what do you think about using that platform to take the legs out from another brand as opposed to saying something specific about your own brand? What do you think on that?

No, that's a great question. I'm always of two minds. I think the way that Claude did it and leading up to the Super Bowl creating a lot of noise was really smart. I think sometimes spending most of your time in a 30-second, or sometimes, if you're lucky, a 60-second ad in the Super Bowl, talking about what you're not or talking about your competitor to reframe who you are, I think can sometimes land poorly. Also just knowing that it is such a crowded space. Yes, you have attention, but you're also shouting over all of these other brands, really making sure that your message is simple, it's understandable, and that people walk away knowing who it's for. I think that that sometimes can be a miss if people are spending the first 75% of your ad thinking it's for someone else.

Well, I mean, it's interesting that you say that as well because Pepsi, I know, Erin, you weren't going to talk about that, but Pepsi utilizing the Coca-Cola Polar Bears. I've seen both people saying, Oh, save the polar bears. Is that out there now? All this stuff. It's funny because it got people thinking. I mean, so Pepsi did get... Now everybody's talking about it, and they're talking about it in terms of Pepsi, not just Coca-Cola. In that scenario, they're utilizing something that's very well known about their top competitor, yet it seems like even if it didn't land exactly well, people are still talking about it. So isn't that what you wanted to have happen? I don't know.

Absolutely. I mean, I think what they did in a smart way is they didn't wait until the end to reveal who it was for. I think even just setting the dynamic of the Polar Bears, the Pepsi challenge, using that as the idea right off the bat, I think it immediately reframed it as this is a Pepsi spot. I think in those situations, that does work pretty effectively.

Yeah, and the memorability The memorability and the recall is key because you had something like the Ben Stiller and Vincent Boon, who, Ben Stiller falling down in costumes, never not going to be funny. But they said bananas a few times. Then at the very end, it's an Instacart. How they said bananas and takeout or bananas and something else, cereal? It might help with the recall and the connectivity back to what this was all about. But I remembered bananas.

I also was interested, and I don't know, you as brand markers can talk about this, but I was very interested in the TurboTax ads with Adrian Brody, and they were different, but they were all aligned the pain of taxes and the drama. He kept doing that. They were like, No, we're pain-free. That's why we need you to stop crying. He's like, I can't stop crying, all the things. I wonder about for them because they had three or four ads during that whole time. Is that the right investment? I thought it was interesting because I was like, What are they trying to get at? I mean, yeah, taxes suck, but what are they trying to get at?

It's a good question. I can't speculate on what their media buy was necessarily or what else is running. But I think in that context, I would imagine that that suite of ads that they ran around the Super Bowl are also running in preseason games leading up to the Super Bowl, the Olympics. I know I saw some TurboTax stuff there as well. I think really making sure that that message doesn't reach wear out, knowing that tax season is so short, they really have to hit it hard in the first couple of months of the year so that by the time people are filing their taxes, it's really top of mind. I think in that case for their brand, that media buy does make sense because they do probably go dark for most of the rest of the year. I wouldn't say that that's probably the case for some other brands where they do have to think about that full year and stretch it out to keep that conversation going.

I would think if you're going to do that much coverage during the game, these were like little standalone vignettes with Adrienne Brodie. It would be smart to do your own little… There was one with Melissa McCartney that was telenovela-themed for something else. But to do part one, part two, where you're creating your own little sub programming bites that you can link together afterward and get some mileage out of. But people may stay tuned for part three if they like parts one and two. Then all of a sudden, that's what they're watching for during the game.

Oh, that makes sense. Because honestly, they were standalone. The first one played at the very beginning of the game, or it maybe even pregame. You saw it and you thought that was it, right? Like, Oh, no drama taxes, or whatever he was saying.

What if it's Adrian Brody saying, I've got to tell everyone about this, and then he starts knocking on doors and he They're going to use celebrities anyway. He starts collecting celebrities, and they go on a mission, and they build this parade of people around them. Then it just once you hang on to say, Oh, who's going to be involved next? Or, How big does this actually get? Yeah.

I will say the Adrian Brody connection made me think about… Obviously, the Super Bowl is a time when there are so many celebs, you almost can't spot which brand is using who, and every year it changes. I think Matthew McConaher has been in a Super Bowl ad every year for the last 10 or something like that. I'm sure I'm getting that stat wrong. But I think where TurboTax got it right, and I think some other brands fall into this category, fanatics with Kendall Jenner, I would say as well. It feels like the celebrity is rooted in a bigger idea, but they don't feel tacked on. It still feels very cohesive. It feels like you're leveraging what you know about that celebrity with what you know about the brand or what you want to communicate about the brand. I think that the use of celebrity in that context, I think, works really well I think others miss the mark when you get so many in there and you just... Yeah, and they feel random. It feels like whoever was available. I love the Emma Stone one with the queer space.

I thought It was beautifully done. It was interesting because the TurboTax ads had already been running. So this whole black and white, very dramatic, very intense. But the humor in it, yet the intensity of it, you knew exactly what this was going to be about. To your point, I think just throwing a celebrity in there to be the celebrity of an ad doesn't always hit because you're like, Wait, that celebrity is not really... That's not really what I would think of them for. I did appreciate that one. That was one of those that I really liked. I thought the Levi's one was Eric maybe hit at the Sydney swing ads a while back when they said, behind every original, that was their whole thing. Then that was a cute But again, I thought that there were just a lot of interesting messages, and it was a little more… There were some that were a lot more serious, even though they used humor for the prostate cancer one and all those kinds of things. I thought it was interesting just to see the mix of ads. Anika, we knew we were going to get the AI ones, but it was interesting to see all the health ones and those types.

Yeah. I mean, there were so many health and pharma ads this year. Look, I mean, we see some of that every year. It felt like there were more this year, and most of them not super successful. I do think the Novartis relax your tight end. I thought it was hilarious. I love that. Oh, my God. That was so funny and You've got these NFL players who are just in their moments of Zen. Everyone just is in on the joke. And then the music choice of Eña was also just hilarious, and I think hit that nostalgia factor. But a really important message, too, and timely for Novartis to be introducing this simple blood test for prostate cancer. I think money well spent for them to get in front of a huge audience during the Super Bowl, and they really delivered creatively where so many of the other pharmaceutical ads just fell short. I don't know, Ro. You have Serena Williams. I expect more. I'd hope for more.

Totally.

Well, Anika, we talked a little bit about previously about the... When you have a message-focused ad, and then you have another one, and can it be too much? Because you have to think of it as a night of entertainment or a night of programming, or you have two message-focused ones, and then you have one of someone getting hit in the face, and it's hilarious. How do you think that you're watching it in real-time? Were you thinking about those things, or how do you think that the effectiveness came across?

No, the context is important. I think even Melissa, to your point about the Adrian Brody turbo-tax, and then you move into the Emma Stone Squarespace, where you have these stark Black and white ads that are so striking on their own. Then do they have the same impact if you're seeing that device used multiple times during the game? No, context always matters. Look, I think there were a couple of points where we had, is it the Backstreet Boys Bowl? A lot of Backstreet where, Okay, first time, really funny. Third time, third time. Now, what was I watching? So, yeah, that's where I think, look, being earlier in the game can be an advantage, right? Because you're hopefully just stacking the odds that you're going to be the first or in the first bucket of whatever the trend may be. Also, you're catching people before maybe they tune out if it's a boring game or if they're just I think there's also a time for humor, and everybody's coming to the Super Bowl for humor. But a really well-placed emotional ad or human-centric storytelling, boy, it can really land and stand out. I think that that can be okay, even if you've just been in a humor zone and then, wow, something comes out and it hits you.

It can really capture attention, like the laze spot, right? I think with the father and the daughter, that was emotionally resonant, really cut through. I had friends on a text chat who were commenting about it and sending messages. I thought that was really beautiful. Amelia, I think the Universal Orlando Resort, Little Bro spot that you worked on. Really sweet. That was great. It's a very lovely human story that so many people can emotionally connect to. That's another that's a little bit refreshing after a lot of slapstick humor.

Absolutely. I think what you touch on, too, is this is such a unique media moment where you have a tuned-in audience, and it's not necessarily just about grabbing attention. It's what do you do once you have it? How do you fill that space and leave someone with something to think about after? I think that's where simplicity really wins. Even some of these ads that we've been talking about, I think they all have that in common, regardless of tone, whether they're making you laugh, making you cry, they are so simple and it's so easy to get. You don't need all of these layers or all of these celebs to understand it. It is just that heart of the idea comes through, and that's something that brands can build on long after the Super Bowl as well.

Yeah.

That's what I appreciate it about your spot is for Universal Orlando. It was such a personal story, but it wasn't even a family. It was just the dynamic between two brothers, and you assume the family's there, too. But then it was just like there was just a narrative shift or a camera angle to the younger brother. All of a sudden, he's leading the way, and it was just such a small yet, we'll call it, you say universal, but the message was we could all feel what they were feeling and I wanted to tap into that moment. It played really well on a big stage.

Well, and then also the scripting, like little little man, and how it changed over time. It went from being derogatory, he felt it was derogatory, and then it was endearing, and then it was uplifting. To not have it be a whole bunch of things that are just getting thrown at you or too many words or too many songs, another Backstreet Boys song or whatever it might be, I think it is that simplicity that drives everybody to have a connection with it because you're not forcing a connection. You're allowing people to think about it in their own way. Think about the wonder of childhood, the wonder of the first time going to a universal resort, all the things. I appreciate those kinds of things that aren't in your face, forcing you to think of things a certain way.

The spots are so short.

It isn't that much time. To be able to grab somebody by the hard strings right away or make it something that they want to watch, I'm sure you guys do all the testing on that. But I thought it was interesting because there were some ads that I was literally taking notes because I knew that's what we were going to be talking about today. Then all of a sudden, I'm totally tuned out, and I'm like, Oh, wait, I missed that ad. I didn't even see Then I see the logo or whatever it is. I was like, Oh, I wasn't even caught in the first 10 seconds. I didn't even worry to pay attention. I don't know. Erin, did you have an ad that you thought was outstanding, different than what we've talked about?

Well, like I said, I like the Universal one. It was NBC, it wasn't ABC, so Disney wasn't all over it with not Disneyland or Disney World. But I feeling if they had an ad for Disney World, it'd be very different from the Universal ad, which I would appreciate. Same with Sabrina Carpenter and the Pringles ad. It's just Sabrina Carpenter doing what she does, and they built an ad around her. It's very different from and two chip companies, ostensibly competitors, get to each do what they do, and there's no crossover confusion about who they each are. I like seeing that. I think there was AI fatigue. I think when you get to the one with Matthew Broderick and you don't know what that does versus copilot versus any of the others anymore, it's just, Leave me alone. I have maybe a worst of the night type of thing. We'll keep it positive and constructive. But no, let's hear what other people say and then come back to me.

I'm curious if anyone has a perspective on Coinbase.

The text on a screen ad?

Yes. The karaoke? Our second Backstreet Boys of the Night. It was the karaoke scream. It was the karaoke scream. Yeah, Coinbase karaoke. I will tell you that it was very polarizing in my household. Yes. Very polarizing. From a marketing standpoint, I thought it was brilliant because everybody stopped and you had that, What is this moment? It reminded me a bit of what Coinbase did with the floating QR code a few years back. Felt on The song Everybody, I'm not going to sing it. That would be bad. But the song Everybody by the Backstreet Boys is sending a message about Coinbase, crypto is for everybody. That's the subtle thread through it. I do think there's something joyful and funny and very strategically smart about what they did. It ranked very high. Amongst ad critiques, it seems to have ranked very high. Then it is absolutely at the very bottom of the USA Today ad meter. Many of the civilians I was with last night hated it. I still think it's smart, but certainly polarizing is my take.

I am so glad that you brought that one up because I had the exact same experience. Marketers were talking about it in my circle, and then all of my friends that I watched at home with were like, What was that? I don't think I got it. I don't know what this was for. I think it does represent… I think that when we think about impact with the Super Bowl, it seems like it falls into one of two camps. You have Fame and buzz on one end of the spectrum where it's just, put your brand out there, get people talking about it, good or bad, all press is good press. Then on the other end of the spectrum, it's that lasting impact and using this as a moment to cement your brand in the mind of your audience and create an emotional connection. I would say Coinbase probably did that Fame and buzz, but I have questions about the lasting impact. I guess only time will tell on where they take this beyond the Super Bowl.

Yeah, I'm not sure the legality, but if they'd tie it in some type of real-time contest into it, I think they could have capitalized on that moment. If it's everybody wins, some people win a dollar, some people win a luxury yacht, some people win a million dollars, and then you're all checking your Coinbase together, you can create that communal moment.

That's interesting, yeah.

Yeah, I agree. It's interesting to hear your perspectives as marketers because, again, that was an underperformer. When you look online right now, everybody is like, That was not worth $8 million. What were they thinking? To your point, Erin, they're like, That was not a big production. They could have given away a million. They could have given away five bitcoins. Come on, you could have helped us all out or sign up, and you could pop in Monday morning, you might be the winner, that thing. I think it's unfortunate because Anika, it was not the first Backstreet Boys song.

It started, so T-Mobile had Backstreet Boys.

They actually had the Backstreet Boys singing. Then you're like, Wait, is this a T-Mobile There's confusion when you're using the same type of media and music. I think that also led to it fell short because by the time it actually showed, it was a little like, We've already heard. Okay, we get the '90s references. That's okay. I think that that probably was an issue for them because I do think that I I was excited about it because we had been talking about it. In my mind, I was like, Oh, this is good because this is connected to what they did before. But then I was like, Oh, no.

My strat brain makes me… I want to dig into the data and understand how many searches for Coinbase results in downloads and things like that, because if that's part of their strategy, it's pretty brilliant. But I don't want to give them too much credit.

Who's the Venn diagram between Coinbase and Backstreet Boys searches?

Yes.

Exactly.

Erin, we're going to need an update. Episode update in 48 hours.

Where are we at? We'll crunch the numbers with all the AI tools. We'll run it through all of them. Yeah. The one that I felt most tonally off, I'll just say, was the Hims and hers, where it talked about 1% and just distancing ourselves from the wealthy. Yeah, it was well-executed. That wasn't the problem. It was just, go look up the CEO's compensation. That is not a nonprofit company. They are in this for the cashola.

You bring up such a good point, and I think that that was something that really struck me watching some of these ads is, I think not just being recognizable and knowing which brand it's for, but does your brand have an authentic role to play? Can your brand tell this story? I think that that's such a good example of a brand that, great message, maybe not the best brand to share that message.

It's funny because I was taking notes, and I just put sad face on that one because I was like, What was that? To your point, I think tone is so important. I think that's also the issue with celebrity soup, when you have a lot…

If it doesn't feel like there's a reason or a clear voice that you're trying to share, and it just feels like you're trying to have a celebrity in your in the mix at a dinner table with other celebrities, it doesn't make any sense to the consumer.

That's not something that we're used to. I think that people are drawn towards things that they can connect to. I know Dove is still doing the same types of things. The girl power, they had the women athletes, and that was great. I also was going to ask you because, Anika, I think you brought it up, or maybe you did, Amelia. But with the Olympics going on at the same time, do you think there was a little bit of like... It's interesting because watching the Olympics, there's very specific types of ads that are playing, big ads which are showcasing the athletes, et cetera, et cetera, which are really heartwarming. But I was wondering, because it's exactly at the same time, I was wondering if people were trying to choose, should We do the Olympic season versus doing the Super Bowl ad? Or did you guys hear anything in your space about that?

Yeah, absolutely. I will also throw World Cup into the mix as well. I know not in this current season, but it's definitely in conversation as people think about their media budgets for the year. I was really struck by the brands that weren't in the Super Bowl this year that I imagine they're doing that calculation and either showing up at the World Cup or at the Olympics, Coca-Cola, Nike, a lot auto brands as well, Visa. I'm sure that that is part of the calculation and looking at how much reach do you get for the dollars spent. I'm sure that stretching it across the Olympics has similar impact to one spot in the Super Bowl.

I think that's right. There was only really one spot that I thought tried to bridge both worlds, and that was the McEnclobe Ultra, I think, Ultra Instructor spot, right? Where they had Kurt Russell, who was reprising his hockey coach character from Miracle. I actually I've seen it not perform so well in some of the critical rankings. I enjoyed it in the moment, and it got some laughs in the room that I was in. I think it's... Look, they're very... Olympics feels like a very different universe than the Super Bowl. It's a very... I think that ad actually played well in the Super Bowl, and it has the potential to land very well throughout the course of the Olympics. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the legendary February plays out.

Well, that's what you want. Ideally, you have to segment your audiences, but if you get carry-over and people stay with you, then you just bring on the campaign. It goes wherever you want it All right. Well, we don't have to fix anything. Thank goodness this time. The ads were what they were. Any final thoughts? Any brands you want to see next year? Any brands you want to see due over next year? Final thoughts, Anika?

I would love to see Microsoft come back to the Super Bowl and get back into its emotional and reconnect with some emotional storytelling. They had an ad for Copilot that was fine. It felt like it didn't meet the moment of Super Bowl for me. I do think Microsoft is a brand that touches everybody. I would love to see them really recommit to some powerful storytelling. They're a big brand. Use that moment to reconnect with consumers in a different way. That's one I'd love to see back in the mix.

Okay. I like that. I'd go with William Shatner. What is he? 92? Oh, boy. God bless him.

Oh, my gosh.

Proving that Raising brand belongs in the cultural conversation at Super Bowl. I would love to see that done in another way where it's like everyone just can't get enough of raisin brand all of a sudden. There's got to be a way to crack it. It just that wasn't it for me. Melissa, what do you think?

Oh, my gosh. You know what? I would love to... Like Anika, I like some more traditional brands showing up again. I feel like I like the new competitor Upstart, but to me, I felt like I was missing some things. I missed Coca-Cola. I wish that I would have seen some of those. I loved, I will say, I just loved the Lay's ad. I thought that was so great. It was nostalgia, right? But nostalgia in a way that wasn't... I felt like Duncan was trying to go for nostalgia with a '90s thing going in. It didn't resonate with me. For me, I loved Levi's and some of these just coming back to this is who we are.

I like that.

Yeah. I like Levi's, too, showing you own every piece of your brand, whether it's the label the inseam or the rivet, it's yours. Use it. I thought that was a good moment. Amelia, what do you think?

Yeah, Melissa, I'm with you on that one. I would put in terms of tone, humor back into the mix. I think when it's done simply, effectively, it doesn't rely on tons of celebrities to deliver that and feel like it's a shtick. I think it can be very effective. I feel for marketers because I think now it is so expensive to enter the Super Bowl that there are so many eyeballs, there's so much pressure on these spots to do everything. My parting thought is I want people to feel free to use this as a space in a larger media plan. It doesn't have to do everything for your brand. Being clear, being simple, and using this as a moment to entertain and leave people with one thought about your brand rather than 10, I think hopefully will free everyone up to make these fun again and simple.

Well, and I love that. I also think, Anika, you brought this up with Ro and Serena, is if you have a celebrity spokesperson, make that connection and lean all the way in. Because I think that the celebrity ad soup is just, I don't get it. What does so and so have to do with this brand? If Instacart is going to lean into it, then Ben Stiller should be all over the place. He should show up. How Aaron likes one of these scenarios, he should be delivering for somebody and be like, Hey, I know you said bananas, but I got you this. That thing. It would be funny, and he would be great. But then you can identify it with it. Because right now, they're just throwing celebrities at ads, and I don't identify that brand with that celebrity. Yeah.

A hundred %.

Yeah. Use those cultural moments and create your own. I love that, Melissa. Get way Ben Stiller's at my door delivering my Instacart during the game. Now there's a camera crew here. You could use that as your next ad. Cut it in real-time. That would be incredible.

Absolutely. Totally. Yeah, because I think viewers can feel the pressure that has gone into these ads. They can feel it when you're holding back or you're trying to cram everything in there so that you're ticking a box. The ads that don't do that, I think, really stand out. More of that, hopefully in the future.

For sure. All right, brands, you got a year. Clock's ticking. Let's do this. Amelia, how can people keep up with what you're doing and the agency and all the good stuff?

Oh, great question. We are active on LinkedIn, Lucky Generals. We have a lot of fun campaigns coming out. I can't say which ones, but more to come from Universal for sure this year. So stay tuned and give us a like and a follow. Maybe book a trip to Universal. Who's to say? Hey. Have to do a Shameless Club.

On board.

You didn't hear it from us. Yeah. You did. Anika, remind everybody, how can we track up with what you're doing?

Thanks, Erin. You can find me on LinkedIn, Anika Khabzev. I am the only one.

Well, thank you so much for being our guest. Thanks for hashing it out with us and bringing the commercials to the forefront. Like I said, We got into this. We didn't get it too insider, but for those of us that are in the field, there was good stuff for us. For those that just wanted to hear some talk back about the ads, I think we went to some interesting places. I'm glad we did this.

Me too.

Awesome.

Thank you to everyone who is listening. If you like what we're doing and you want to advertise your company on our podcast, we'll do it for seven million. That's last year's price, guys. Agents are standing by, so you better reach out to our team at advertiserwefixeditpod. Com. That's advertiserwefixeditpod. Com. Keep listening, keep supporting your home team. They're going to go all the way next year. I can feel it. We will see you next time. We hope you enjoyed this episode of We Fixed It. You're welcome. We go into every.