Apparently making a big thing about Beyoncé’s backside in Levi’s jeans was a successful ploy last year. TBWA\Chiat\Day LA has made an entire commercial about backsides in Levi’s for its first Super Bowl in 20 years. The 60-second spot, Backstory, was directed by Kim Gehrig and kicks off a new global campaign Behind Every Original, that asserts the brand’s role in fashion culture. The backsides featured include Grammy-winner, Doechii; New Zealand-South Korean pop star, ROSÉ; reigning NBA MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander; Grammy- and Academy Awarded filmmaker, artist and DJ, Questlove; model, Stefanie Giesinger; and Disney-Pixar’s Toy Story character, Woody. Amping up the mood is James Brown’s Get Up Offa That Thing, and underlining the brand’s role in culture are references to George Michael’s Faith era and a modern reimagining of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. album cover.
A sitcom, a ‘90s sitcom at that. Dunkin’ has taken a “lost” (and we’re told “much better”) 1995 sitcom pilot to the Super Bowl imagining Good Will Hunting as a workplace comedy set in a Boston Dunkin’. The 60-second spot puts Ben Affleck in Matt Damon’s role as Will Hunting. Others in the mass-star lineup include Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, Jason Alexander, Alfonso Ribeiro, Jaleel White, Jasmine Guy, Ted Danson – with a cameo from Tom Brady. The spot brings Dunkin’s 1995 iced coffee “breakthrough” moment back into culture and Dunkin’ will give away 1.995 million free coffees, any size, in the Dunkin’ app on Super Bowl Monday, along with a drop limited-edition ’90s-inspired merch.
The Super Bowl ads tend to try to bedazzle with celebrities, big productions and wit. Cryptocurrency trading platform, Coinbase, does none of this. It has now run two Super Bowl ads. In 2022, it showed nothing but a floating QR code. This year, it has printed out the lyrics to the Backstreet Boys’ 1997 hit, Everybody (Backstreet’s Back), beginning with the words, “Oh my god we’re back again”.
Offline, OpenAI responded to Anthropic’s snarky Super Bowl dig at ChatGPT’s decision to add advertising with derision. Online, OpenAI has ignored its rival completely. Its Super Bowl add sells the dream of building better projects – all done with evocative imagery and rousing music.
While the Super Bowl action held eyes in its grip, fans’ brains were possibly ruminating over the question, What’s your favourite Pokémon? Pokémon had invested US$8 million to make that happen, with Trevor Noah, Jisoo, Lamine Yamal, Young Miko, Lady Gaga and Maitreyi Ramakrishnan added in for their celebrity powers.
TBWA\Chiat Day\New York has coaxed Nissan into showing its wild side for the Super Bowl. And the result is a standout. It’s fast, loud and silly – everything needed to cut through in social media (which is where the ad is living with additional shortform content running across throughout the Big Game weekend). The commercial, featuring chef and actor, Matty Matheson, introduces a humorous fictional product that shows off the Nissan Rogue’s interior engineering – and offers a brilliant solution for transporting chip and dip platters.
If you thought boy bands could not be made any more kitsch, T-Mobile’s Super Bowl ad will surprise you. The Backstreet Boys return to tell you why to switch to the telco, with a reimagined version of their 1999 hit, I Want it That Way. It’s pink, with glitter, hammy acting and a massive throng of admiring fans. The commercial was directed by Hot Tub Time Machine filmmaker, Steve Pink, and produced by Panay Films.
Once upon a time in Adland, America was known for its heartstring-tuggers. The country seemed to know no bounds for how far emotionality could go. Rocket brings that back in its Super Bowl spot, America Needs Neighbours Like You, “a deeply human story of resilience, community and the quiet strength that emerges when people show up for one another,” the company noted in its blog. Lady Gaga adds to the story of neighbours showing up when there’s a crisis to be solved, with a reimagined version of Fred Rogers’ theme song, “Won’t You Be My Neighbour?
Toyota, the US Official Automotive Partner of the NFL, has also gone for emotionality. The brand has already established a tradition of human-centric storytelling that highlights moments, relationships and dreams that shape who we become.
Toyota’s first of two 30-second heartstring tuggers is Superhero Belt by Saatchi & Saatchi US, the story of connection between a doting grandfather and grandson as time changes their roles. It was directed by Pulse Films director, Rodrigo Saavedra.
The second spot, Where Dreams Began, created by Unverified, features Team Toyota athletes, NFL wide receiver, Puka Nacua; US Paralympian Oksana Masters; and NASCAR driver, Bubba Wallace; to imagine what greatness looked like from day one by looking back to the time when these champions were just kids with a dream. It was directed by Alberto Blanco and produced by Sweatpants Media.
Chris Hemsworth is scared of Alexa+. That alone is humorous. What he imagines the AI Alexa+ will do to him is hilarious – think drowning, being attacked by a bear and guillotined by a garage door. It’s Super Bowl fun that’s likely to cut through the clutter. Not easy to do on game day. As usual, the commercial was created in-house.
Google has built a big campaign around the Super Bowl. It began with a celebrity-packed YouTube TV pre-game spot, Don’t Settle for Meh, that packaged the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics, and featured Jason and Kylie Kelce, Gordon Ramsay, Christian McCaffrey, David Blaine and Olympic gold medallist, Sarah Hughes.
The national in-game commercial, New Home, depends on irresistible cuteness – a small child and mum use AI – specifically, Gemini’s Nano Banana, as well as Connected Apps – to design their new home. The film’s sweetness is underscored by Randy Newman’s Feels Like Home and was created by Google Creative Lab, directed by Daniel Mercadante and produced by Park Pictures.
It also kicks off Google’s full Super Bowl campaign spanning TV, OLV, OOH, social, influencer, and experiential activations that includes a series of “Instant Replay” digital spots.
The NFL’s softer side, Inspire Change platform takes a warm hug song to the Super Bowl with a cause spot celebrating the power of feeling seen, valued, and supported. The 30-second spot by 72andSunny is inspired by the much-loved Mister Rogers and his pre-school TV series, Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood, and features its famous song, You Are Special. NFL stars, Michael Strahan, Cam Heyward, and Christian McCaffrey, join children from Harlem Children’s Zone, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and SMASH, and a reworked version on You Are Special by BUTTER Music and Sound.
Whoa. Jeep’s sweet Super Bowl ad changes mood abruptly halfway through. It’s the stuff kids’ nightmares are made of. The spot, Billy Goes to the River, by Highdive Advertising promotes the 2026 Jeep Cherokee’s safety features with a subtle nod to Billy Big Mouth Bass, an animatronic singing toy invented by Gemmy Industries in 1998.
Squarespace’s 12th Super Bowl ad, Unavailable, begins in horror film’s traditional, moody black & white with a scream and an ECU of a single eye followed by a distraught face – that of Emma Stone. It’s directed by Stone’s frequent collaborator, Yorgos Lanthimos, and is the most sophisticated production to come to the Super Bowl this year. Perhaps the 2026 favourite? A 30-second version will run between the first and second quarters with a simple call to action – get your domain before you lose it.
Beauty Brand, Tree Hut, has noted that its category’s conventions are sooo bland. It has placed itself in the Super Bowl for the first time to encourage people to break out of the mould and embrace colour, texture, scent, and unapologetic joy. The offbeat beauty spot, Uncontain Yourself, was created by agency, Bakery, and stars several of the social media creators who have fuelled the brand’s social media fandom. It follows the brand’s December rebrand and first linear advertising push.
Does advertising belong everywhere? That’s the question Claude is challenging Super Bowl viewers to think about. The campaign by Mother for AI company, Anthropic, (four ads in all – two at the Super Bowl) launches Claude’s commitment not to run ads (yes, that is ironic).
Is football one huge ploy to sell food? Uber Eats (aka Matthew McConaughey and Bradley Cooper) have debated this at several Super Bowls. This Super Bowl, Parker Posey joins in, but the audience gets to decide (and Uber Eats gets them to down load its app). Clever.
When men shed that unwanted hair, they feel better. But how does that unwanted hair feel? No one wants to be discarded. Quality Meats and Manscaped present discarded hair’s point of view in a melodramatic ballad sung by the lovelorn.
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Xfinity give a big new (happy) ending to one of Hollywood’s most enduring hits, Jurassic Park. Sam Neil, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum take up their roles again as Dr Alan Grant, Dr Ellie Sattler and Dr Ian Malcom. In this new version of the 1993 classic all ends well. The park’s nightmare never happened because Xfinity’s connectivity kept the security systems alive. The scientists spend a pleasant weekend streaming Love Island poolside, jogging with the Gallimimus and going live in front of the T-Rex enclosure.
Tombras and Easy Pete director, Zach Tavel, have brought in “evil” Tim Robinson with an absurdly awful revenge plan on the city that has been “nothing but nasty” to him. The 30-second regional Super Bowl ad begins a multi-part series following the new antagonist, showing how poorly optimised infrastructure foils even the most evil plans. Happily there’s business software company, Rippling.
Pringles teased its Super Bowl ad with IT girl of the moment, Sabrina Carpenter’s mystery lover. So now we know who she is dating. The so-topical [read: man-magnet] commercial was created by BBDO New York, and directed by Manchild directors, Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia, with production by Iconoclast.
Jason Kelce stars with Beau Allen in the regional Super Bowl ad for his own Garage Beer. The commercial features delivery horses, a so-cute mini one and a dog. Who the commercial is mocking is fiendishly apparent. There’s also a poo prank for laughs. Yes, you’re right; Travis Kelce is the other co-owner of the brand.
Johannes Leonardo returns Volkswagen to the Super Bowl after a one-year hiatus with a revival of the brand’s ‘90s platform, Drivers Wanted, a call to live life to the full and the ageless cool of House of Pain’s Jump Around. The full 90-second spot is running online. A 30-second cutdown will air during the second half of the game.
Love a soppy soap opera? E.l.f. is giving that cringe-making joy to Super Bowl viewers. Melissa McCarthy shares the limelight with Nicholas Gonzalez and telenovela actress, Itatí Cantoral…
…and the telenova concept was triggered by Bad Bunny joking in his October 2025 Saturday Night Live monologue that non-Spanish speakers had “four months” to learn the language before he hit the stage at the Super Bowl.
Mischief @ No fixed Address and eos tap into the cultural phenomenon of tromp l’oeil cakes – and notably the 2022 Netflix game show, Is it Cake?. The brand’s second-ever Super Bowl ad features comedian and host of the show, Mikey Day, who challenges contestants to identify the cake in the room. But the brand’s Pistachio Cashmere Body Mist interferes.
Vodka brand, Svedka, has risked derision with the first AI-generated Super Bowl commercial. The 30-second spot features the return of the brand’s Fembot in an updated version, as well as new robot, Brobot, and their dance is user-submitted, part of a contest.
Anomaly and Grubhub are taking George Clooney; awarded Greek filmmaker and theatre director; Yorgos Lanthimos; a sumptuous feast setting; and a quirky debate about fees, to the Super Bowl. The commercial announces that Grubhub will “eat the delivery fees” on restaurant orders over $50. The spot will air in the third quarter of the Super Bowl.
State Farm has begun its Super Bowl campaign with the call to viewers to “tune in to the first quarter of the Big Game to see how the story ends”. The commercials feature Katseye and Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer; “essential” Super Bowl celebrities, Hailee Steinfeld, Keegan-Michael Key and Danny McBride; and a fictional insurance company, Halfway There Insurance.
All the celebrities come out for the Super Bowl ad competition. It’s a mutually beneficial Super Bowl tradition. McCann has gathered together Ben Stiller, Benson Boone and director, Spike Jonze, for Instacart’s second ever Super Bowl commercial, plus behind the scenes partners, Instacart internal creative agency, Local Produce, and BBDO. The commercial is bananas – all about bananas.
Anomaly is taking the celeb power of Post Malone, Shane Gillis and Peyton Manning to the Super Bowl again – this year adding an absurd wedding keg chase and emotional powerhouse, Whitney Houston’s I will Always Love You.
Even Bueno Kinder has fallen in with the Super Bowl ad celebrity imperative. And it has added a space theme for extra ad oomph. Style expert, Daphne founder, and co-host of Giggly Squad, Paige DeSorbo, and Hollywood actor, William Fichtner, feature in Anomaly’s, Yes Bueno, with meteor showers, aliens, and a trip through a black hole, moments that would typically be “No Bueno”.
To bring cinematic scale to the Super Bowl debut, the production team shipped a real spacecraft fuselage complete with working lights, along with authentic astronaut suits and helmets worn on set. Rather than filming the control room in a traditional office setting, production design used a volumetric screen to create one wall of the set, housing emergency graphics and spaceship visuals while also influencing the lighting. The same volumetric screen was used to capture the experience of travelling through a black hole, with the in-camera graphics reflecting off the actor’s face to create an immersive effect. To ground the campaign further in practical filmmaking, the team built a physical alien planet miniature set with in-camera lighting passes, pushing beyond traditional post-production VFX. All of this was managed by director, Björn Rühmann; production designer, Jeremy Hindle; and director of photography, Mike Gioulakis.
The full campaign includes a :45 extended cut, plus influencer partnerships, media, e-commerce, special retail displays, packaging, and limited-edition white and dark chocolate flavours.
Ogilvy US and Dove present a 30-second anthem about body confidence to the Super Bowl audience built from the need to keep girls in sport. The Game is Ours responds to Dove’s research that found one in two girls quit sports by the age of 14 due to low body confidence.
William Shatner has become Will Shat for the Super Bowl. VaynerMedia has picked up on the possibilities in his name and added a sprinkling of poo jokes for Kellogg’s Raisin Bran cereal.
Pepsi reawakens the taste war between Pepsi and Coke in its Super Bowl commercial, The Choice, by stealing Coke’s polar bear mascot, who is distraught by finding that he has chosen Pepsi Zero Sugar over Coke in a blind taste test. The film’s humour is enhanced by a brazen riff on last year’s Coldplay kiss cam.
The 30-second ad, airing in the second quarter, was directed by Taika Waitiki, who also briefly plays the bear’s therapist. The bear’s emotional journey is underscored by Queen’s I Want to Break Free.
Fallon has gifted Novartis a superb NFL double entendre for its Super Bowl commercial that promotes testicular cancer checking. The film was directed by PRETTYBIRD director, Eric EWareheim. A very relaxed group of tight ends features – George Kittle from San Francisco 49ers and Colby Parkinson from Los Angeles Rams, plus past NFL tight ends, Rob Gronkowski from Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Greg Olsen form Carolina Panthers, Tony Gonzalez from Atlanta Falcons, Delanie Walker from Tennessee Titans, and Vernon Davis from San Francisco 49ers.
Ozempic, the weight loss phenomenon of 2025 is making its presence known at the Super Bowl. US medications brand, Ro, is giving GLP-1 its 30-seconds in the Super Bowl sun with ambassador, Serena Williams, and her “I lost 34 lbs (16kgs) in a year” promise.
Toyota opts for the message of kindness in its Super Bowl ad for the RAV4. The commercial was created by Saatchi & Saatchi and directed by Pulse Films director, Rodrigo Saavedra.
Some of the best ads this year have picked up on social media hits. Sports betting platform, Fanatics Sportsbook, has picked up on the Kardashian Kurse, the social media conspiracy theory (begun in Keeping Up With The Kardashians season 12, episode 6) that Kendall Jenner’s family hexes her ex-boyfriends so their post-break-up lives become disastrous. The Super Bowl ad, Bet on Kendall, also follows the “must have a celebrity” formula. It was created by Fanatics Studios, a joint venture between e-commerce platform, Fanatics, and OBB Media, and directed by Michael D.Ratner and Cameron Harris.
Wieden + Kennedy New York tops the most celebrities in a 2026 Super Bowl spot – actors, Kurt Russell & Lewis Pullman, Olympic snowboarder, Chloe Kim; and former professional ice hockey right winger. TJ Oshie tout Michelob Ultra.
