Super Bowl commercials rely on comedy and nostalgia to avoid potential missteps

This year’s Super Bowl commercials went for easy laughs and nostalgia, largely steering clear of controversy and leaving the surprises on the football field, where the Philadelphia Eagles dominated the Kansas City Chiefs.

Eugene Levy’s eyebrows flew off and buzzed around after he ate some Little Caesars. Four old ladies went on a joy ride in a commercial for WeatherTech, while sloths had a case of the Mondays in an ad for Coors Light. And British singer Seal became an actual seal, sad that he couldn’t hold Mountain Dew with his flippers.

Actor Glenn Powell did a take on Goldilocks for Ram Trucks, while comedian Nate Bargatze cloned himself and hired an opera singer because he saved so much money using DoorDash. Shaboozey took a lighthearted stroll through New Orleans for Nerds, while the stars of the “Fast and Furious” franchise took a slow cruise in a convertible so they could enjoy Häagen-Dazs ice cream bars.

Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, said this was a complicated Super Bowl for advertisers.

Most ads were in development during last fall’s U.S. presidential election race, so avoiding controversy was even more of a priority than usual, Calkins said. The finalized crop of commercials feature a lot of simple humor, nostalgia and few creative risks, he said. But even that approach can backfire.

“That’s the challenge this year. Everybody wants to be safe, but you also want to be interesting,” Calkins said. “Safe advertising isn’t the advertising you notice or remember.”

And advertisers can’t afford not to be noticed. Some of the roughly 80 Super Bowl ads spots cost a record $8 million for 30 seconds this year.

Here are some of the themes of this year’s Super Bowl ads:

Heartwarming nostalgia

Budweiser brought back its Clydesdales for its Super Bowl ad, including a foal that wants to join the delivery team. Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal reenacted their famous deli scene from 1989’s “When Harry Met Sally,” except this time Sally was expressing her enthusiasm for Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

Harrison Ford was reflective in an ad for Jeep, talking about freedom and personal choices. “This Jeep makes me happy, even though my last name is Ford,” he said.

The Muppets searched for accommodations with Booking.com, while an Instacart ad featured a parade of familiar mascots like Mr. Clean, the Jolly Green Giant and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Disney asked what the world would be like without the iconic characters it owns, like Elsa from “Frozen,” Bart Simpson and the Marvel superheroes.

Advertisers are leaning on nostalgia more than they used to in Super Bowl ads, according to Kimberly Whitler, a marketing professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Nods to the past can broaden the appeal of an ad to different generations and connect products to positive cultural moments, she said.

Celebrity mash-ups

Putting celebrities together in unexpected combinations can broaden the appeal of a commercial. In their Super Bowl ad for Michelob Ultra, actors Catherine O’Hara and Willem Dafoe are pickleball champs. Soccer star David Beckham and actor Matt Damon are long-lost twins who bond over Stella Artois. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and comedian Pete Davidson teamed up for a HexClad commercial, while Post Malone, Shane Gillis and Peyton Manning had a block party with Bud Light. A slew of celebrities, including Matthew McConaughey, Martha Stewart, Greta Gerwig and Charlie XCX, appeared in an ad for Uber Eats.

Linli Xu, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, said celebrity endorsements can get people talking. But with dozens of brands using them, there’s a risk of diminishing returns.

Celebrities can also get so much attention that viewers don’t remember which brand they’re advertising, Xu said.

“There is a balancing act in terms of having celebrities in the ads,” she said.

Women in focus

Multiple ads put a spotlight on women and girls. Pharmaceutical company Novartis promoted early detection for breast cancer, while Lay’s had a heart-warming spot featuring a little girl who grows her own potato.

Women’s sports were also a big focus. Nike featured Caitlin Clark, Sha’Carri Richardson, Sabrina Ionescu, Jordan Chiles, A’ja Wilson and Sophia Wilson in a commercial talking about how often female athletes face the word, “can’t.” The ad’s conclusion: “You can’t win. So win.”

The NFL ran a commercial calling for girls’ flag football to become a varsity sport in all 50 states. But Dove also offered a sobering statistic: half of girls who quit sports have been criticized for their body type.

“Clearly the advertisers are trying to target the female audience, given the rising number of female viewers for the big game and the NFL in general in recent years,” Xu said.

Gross-out humor

Charles Taylor, a marketing professor at Villanova University’s School of Business, noticed more gross-out humor than usual.

In a commercial for Dunkin’, actor Jeremy Strong emerged from a can of coffee covered in grounds and brown liquid. A man’s tongue started dancing to celebrate cold foam from Nestlé Coffee Mate. And in a star-studded ad for Pringles, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, L.A. Clippers’ James Harden and actor Nick Offerman all watch their iconic mustaches jump off their faces and soar through the sky to help deliver cans of the chips.

Taylor said the ads do get attention, but the yuck-factor could backfire.

Serious moments

It wasn’t all fun and games at the Super Bowl this year. Pharmaceutical company Pfizer promoted its efforts to cure cancer. Hims & Hers, a telehealth company, talked about America’s obesity epidemic. The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, founded by New England Patriots Chairman and CEO Robert Kraft, ran an ad featuring Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady saying what they hate about each other, in an effort to show how pointless hate is.

An ad from Rocket showed people dreaming of home and aimed to get the Super Bowl crowd to sing along to “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Xu said she expected more ads promoting that unifying message, but thought most advertisers went with humor instead.

“We just had an election year and there’s a lot of discussion around divisiveness,” she said. “People might be wanting to see some unity, everybody coming together as a country.”

For the third consecutive year, the religious-themed He Gets Us commercial returned to the Super Bowl. This year’s ad featured Johnny Cash’s cover of “Personal Jesus” and showed everyday people being helpful and heroic. Come Near, a nonprofit that says it aims to share “the love and message of Jesus in disruptive and personally engaging ways,” funded the ad this year and last year after taking over the effort from a previous group.

Artificial intelligence arrives

Several Super Bowl ads made the case for AI as a helpmate. Chris Pratt, Chris Hemsworth and Kris Jenner teamed up for an ad wearing Meta ‘s smart glasses, which use artificial intelligence to answer questions about what wearers are seeing. Actor Walton Goggins pitched GoDaddy Airo, which uses AI to help build websites and social content. And Google’s “50 States, 50 Stories” campaign is showing viewers a small business from their state that’s using Google’s Gemini AI assistant. But Cirkul, a water bottle brand, poked fun at AI, showing comedian Adam Devine accidentally ordering 100,000 bottles using the AI assistant on his phone.

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This story has been corrected to show that previous Super Bowl ads in the “He Gets Us” campaign were run by a different group.