Here’s one thing I hated about the commercials for the Super Bowl this year: Apparently, if I can trust the PR campaigns behind many of these ads, to get the full “experience” of their commercials, I had to start following their campaigns in January. I had to catch the teaser for the teaser, then follow a social-media rollout hinting at more, watch the teaser, then finally, on game day, see why they spent $8 to $10 million (a record) for airtime alone.
Does anyone really want to be this invested in Pringles or Skittles or Hellmann’s mayonnaise? Surely there must be easier ways for advertising professionals to meet Sabrina Carpenter or Andy Samberg or get Elijah Wood to sign their Blu-Ray of “Return of the King.” Celebrity was the focus Sunday, of course, as it is most Super Bowls, but why does it seem like partnering with celebrities is now the only inspiration for these ads?
Some thoughts on the good and the bad, what soared and what landed like a drop of guac on the carpet.
Bad: Gag me with rural sincerity
Budweiser, to celebrate its 150th year, paired another Clydesdale with 30 seconds of the most lazy Super Bowl marketing cliches ever: a bald eagle learning to fly (and CGI-looking), the soft strums of “Free Bird,” a couple of teary-eyed farmers and honey-kissed fields. The subtext is: Cringe at this unintentional parody and you probably hate sentiment, family farms and America. I’ll take that risk. (Lays, on the other hand, playing in the same ballpark with a salute to American potato farms, developed recognizable people — same emotions, smarter results. Even better was the teaser for the upcoming “Mandalorian” movie, satirizing Clydesdales with Tauntauns.)
Good: Best use of a high-ticket celebrity
OK, maybe landing Samberg was perfect for Hellmann’s, which let him channel his inspired Lonely Island days into a demented and pretty funny twist on Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” Samberg plays Meal Diamond as the Phantom of the Deli, shouting that he lives in the walls and “Sometimes I wonder who my parents are!” Who cares that it makes zero sense? Whenever you hear Diamond now, you’ll hear: “Ham …. touching ham … touching cheese … touch-ing you!”
Bad: Sub-Second City
On the other hand, sometimes letting famous faces riff looks as aimless as it sounds. Ben Stiller and Benson Boone, as a hapless Europop duo for Instacart, never pushed further than Looney-Tunes accents and pratfalls, sending up Benson’s real-life stage flips. (To add insult to faux injury, it was directed by Spike Jonze, usually known for his charm and invention.) Even more meandering: Matthew McConaughey, still going on and on for Uber Eats.
Good: An elevated dad joke
Novartis made clever use of a stupid pun: NFL tight ends (Rob Gronkowski, former Chicago Bear Greg Olsen) urging men to “relax your tight end” and get a prostate screening. Narrated by former coach Bruce Arians, explaining he caught his own cancer diagnosis early. Enya on the soundtrack. Unformed tight ends birding. But genuinely useful. As Spinal Tap put it: There is a fine line between stupid and clever.
Bad: Let them eat chicken wings
Sure, TV commercials could not seem more meaningless in 2026. But did they at least take the nation’s temperature on its biggest stage? Of course not. You might even argue that a few looked more out of touch than usual: The telehealth platform Hims & Hers started out admirably blunt (“Rich people live longer”) only to cheapen its message (affordable healthcare for everyone else) into a muddy calculus — the rich are ogres and the rest of us are satisfied getting the bare minimum. Even more tone-deaf: Fanatics Sportsbook’s Kendall Jenner ad. The joke is this: The Kardashian Kurse that supposedly dooms athletes who dates Jenner has also been a windfall. She bets against boyfriends and walks off with an even richer life of private jets and vintage cars. Remember the rightfully-scorned 2017 Pepsi ad in which Jenner joined a protest, easing tensions with a Pepsi? I’m starting to wonder if there IS a Kardashian Kurse.
Good: Saying the quiet part out loud
Other than a hilariously simplistic ad for TrumpAccounts.gov (“That’s free money!”), and a couple of spots poking fun at the Bad Bunny controversy (Melissa McCarthy and Owen Wilson, learning Spanish), you didn’t have to worry about politics invading Super Bowl ads this year. Except for this subtle, powerful message, which beamed in from a distant planet: I couldn’t tell you what it has to do with Rocket Mortgage, but Lady Gaga turning Fred Rogers’ “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” into a teary call for community itself arrives at exactly the right moment. A contemporary upgrading of “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”
Bad: Blah new world
Some Super Bowls, the ads are all about crypto, or, in Jurassic times, light beer. The theme this year was the joy of AI. You’d expect a tech industry that’s set society on edge to promise blue skies, but most of these ads looked laughably at odds with reality. Apparently, Oakley Meta AI Glasses are best for… extreme sports? AI-coding platform Base44 will be used in fully staffed offices. Ring cameras find lost dogs using AI and your neighbor’s porch cameras. (What could go wrong?) Ramp, a financial company pushing AI-driven efficiency, went with Brian Baumgartner of “The Office” multiplying himself, doing everything. (Do they teach metaphor to marketing professionals?) Svedka Vodka boasted an AI-made ad with robot dancers, as creepy as that sounds. At least AI platform Artlist cut through the hype, revealing its parody of this year’s Super Bowl ads was made in just three days using AI. Bonus points to AI assistant Claude, which trolled OpenAI’s decision to include advertising in AI answers. (As for OpenAI: At last year’s Super Bowl, they compared AI to the discovery of fire; this year, they merely reminded us of the power of curiosity, which sounds like progress.)
Good: Good-dumb
You know, piles of singing anthropomorphic hair only sound disgusting. Manscaped, the makers of electric razors, featured adorable googly-eyed clumps of hairs in shower drains and on toilet seats, crooning a terrifically perverse song that veered into more almost-profanity than an Austin Powers movie. (The advertising company behind the spot is Quality Meats, a rising industry star based in Chicago.) A couple of additional good-dumbs: Sabrina Carpenter’s crumbly boyfriend, made of Pringles; and Colin Jost and Michael Che espousing the thrill of a live Super Bowl show, while broadcasting from a janitor’s closet. (And one bummer: Jeep produced a darkly hilarious ad for the Super Bowl starring a Big Mouth Billy Bass novelty fish who is sweetly released into the wild, only to be devoured by grizzly bears and eagles; last week, at the 11th hour, Jeep decided not to spend $8 million for 30 seconds. So you can find it online right now.)
Bad: Dumb-dumb
Bud Light cast its ad well — there is a fair amount of easy charm and chemistry between Post Malone, Payton Manning and Shane Gillis. So why squander it on a slow-motion tumble down a hill to rescue a keg? Ritz was even more witless: They hired Bowen Yang, Jon Hamm and Scarlett Johansson and made their entire joke about Yang shouting “Let’s party!” from a jet ski. (Like you, I thought I missed something.)
Good: Best in Show
Squarespace’s entire campaign starring Emma Stone, directed by filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (who also made “Poor Things” and the Oscar nominee “Bugonia” with Stone). The premise is simple: Emma Stone is having trouble getting EmmaStone.com because someone claimed it first. In one of the ads, she’s weeping and smashing laptops; in another, she’s threatening the owner of the domain with violence; in yet another, she’s rattling off every variation of EmmaStone.com she can imagine. The follow-though is sincerely funny, not funny-for-a-commercial funny — but elegantly shot, part homage to ‘70s David Lynch, part monochrome Bergman dream.
What was that I said again about celebrity?
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
Column: Most Super Bowl halftimes are bonkers. Bad Bunny’s was close to art.
