Super Bowl spots: Stop hiding weak ideas behind famous faces

Every year, the industry follows a predictable Super Bowl playbook; the brand with the biggest celebrity wins, even if the idea is actually weak.

If this is the trap we fall into year after year, is competing for a Super Bowl slot still a relevant approach?

Is competing for a Super Bowl slot still a relevant approach?

My answer is yes. But not in its current form.

Above: Is competing for a Super Bowl ad slot still relevance today? asks Michael Bucchino.

Years ago, during a quick lunch break on a Super Bowl campaign shoot, I sat with our talent. While it was one of the first brand campaigns he’d ever done, it was someone we’d all refer to as an A-lister. We ate lunch mostly in silence, until he surprised us by asking two important questions we sometimes ask ourselves: 

1. Why were we paying him so much? 

2. Does his involvement actually help the brand?

[The Super Bowl] has become the place to hide a weak idea behind a famous face.

That’s the real problem with Super Bowl advertising today. Not that the moment has lost relevance, but it has become the place to hide a weak idea behind a famous face. The media budget is what it is, but the production budget is usually much more than an agency typically has to work with for a standard brand campaign. So, with that kind of money, the temptation is obvious; allocate a large sum to a celebrity in order to stand out.

Unfortunately, talent is not the idea. Throwing a celebrity at a half-baked idea because you have the budget does not solve these challenges, it just makes them more expensive. So, make the idea great. Make it clever. Clever has become synonymous with being memorable.

Above: Tubi's 2023 Super Bowl spot impacted viewers and was memorable because of it.  

Don’t get me wrong, we love a good celebrity spot. Especially when the celebrity is right for the brand. And when a celebrity is not right for the brand, come up with an idea that makes them being so wrong, so right! That’s when it gets fun. Recent Super Bowls prove the moment is still relevant when the thinking is right.

Tubi’s Interface Interruption [above] stole the spotlight during the 2023 Super Bowl. The streaming service used its 15-second ad spot to prank viewers by pretending there was a disruption happening on their broadcast. It started with broadcasters reporting on the game, then cut to their interface and someone scrolling through Tubi’s programming. The internet erupted in real-time. The idea’s impact was felt beyond the screen, as people thought their remote was broken or someone was messing with them.

[Michael Cera] was a perfect example of a celebrity who is not right for the brand, but they had a great idea that made him right. 

I also love the famous Coinbase QR Code spot from the 2022 Super Bowl. Simple. Clever. Highly impactful. It was mentioned more than any other campaign in social media with almost 80,000 mentions.

And we all remember Michael Cera kill it in the CeraVe campaign in 2024 [below]. That was a perfect example of a celebrity who is not right for the brand, but they had a great idea that made him right. The only way in — his name. Michael Cera is famously known to be low maintenance, so a partnership with a beauty brand is as unexpected as you can get. CeraVe borrowed his voice rather than the brand’s to make a compelling and incredibly memorable campaign.