Super Bowl ads go for silliness, tears and nostalgia as Americans reel from ‘collective trauma’ of recent upheaval — ‘Everybody is stressed out’
At a difficult time for America, Super Bowl advertisers ask viewers to take care of themselves and others — and maybe even crack a smile.
Ring shows how neighbors can use their doorbell cameras to find lost pets. A Budweiser Clydesdale protects a bald eagle chick from the rain. Novartis touts a blood test that can detect prostate cancer. Toyota reminds viewers to wear their seatbelts.
Mister Rogers is invoked twice: Lady Gaga sings his classic “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” in a tearjerker for Rocket Companies while the National Football League uses “You Are Special” to promote its work with youth sports organizations.
America is uneasy. U.S. consumer confidence fell to its lowest level since 2014 in January. The killings of two protesters by federal officers in Minneapolis last month led to widespread outrage. And winter weather has been brutal across much of the country.
“There is a collective trauma. Everybody is stressed out. It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s something that’s impacting everyone,” said Vann Graves, the executive director of the Brandcenter at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Super Bowl ads, he said, give people a much-needed respite and a rare shared moment.
“It’s been a bit of time that we can just be human and be silly and enjoy ourselves,” he said.
Playing for laughs
There is plenty of silliness in this year’s commercials. Sabrina Carpenter tries to build the perfect man out of Pringles. Benson Boone and Ben Stiller play a disco duo doing flips over Instacart. Andy Samberg, playing “Meal Diamond,” squirts Hellmann’s mayonnaise on the sandwiches of Elle Fanning and other deli customers.
Polar bears — Coca-Cola’s traditional mascots — share a Pepsi in an ad that spoofs last year’s viral kiss cam. Adrien Brody can’t stop overacting in a commercial for TurboTax.
Delivery services try to outdo each other. George Clooney appears in a Grubhub ad to promote free delivery on orders of $50 or more. Uber Eats enlists Matthew McConaughey to convince Bradley Cooper and Parker Posey that football is a conspiracy to make people hungry. And Rapper 50 Cent trolls Sean “Diddy” Combs in an ad for DoorDash.
AI Bowl
Artificial intelligence is all over the Super Bowl airwaves.
Oakley Meta touts its AI-enabled glasses in two action-packed spots showing Spike Lee, Marshawn Lynch and others using the glasses to film video and answer questions. Wix debuts an ad for Wix Harmony, which uses AI tools for website design.
Svedka Vodka enlisted Silverside AI, an AI studio, to help create its ad, which features its robot mascot FemBot dancing alongside her male counterpart, BroBot.
Like AI itself, AI ads aren’t without controversy. AI developer Anthropicis airing a pair of commercials pointing out that Claude, its chatbot, doesn’t have ads. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took issue with that in a recent social media post; OpenAI said last month it will start testing ads as a way to keep ChatGPT free.
Amazon also strikes a nerve with an ad starring Chris Hemsworth that pokes fun of people’s fears of AI. The ad is running just days after Amazon laid off 16,000 corporate workers, some of whom may be replaced with AI.
“I suspect this is meant to be funny, but it might reinforce some people’s very real concerns about AI,” said Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University.
Health Frenzy
Super Bowl ads still celebrate snacks. Bowen Yang, Scarlett Johansson and Jon Hamm team up to pitch Ritz crackers. A retiring potato farmer passes the farm along to his daughter in a heartfelt ad for Lay’s.
But there’s also a focus on health. Octavia Spencer and Sofia Vergara urge people to test for kidney disease in an ad for Boehringer Ingelheim.
Mike Tyson talks about his sister’s death from obesity in an ad urging people to eat real, unprocessed food. The ad was paid for by MAHA Center Inc., a nonprofit led by Tony Lyons, a publisher and key ally of U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
GLP-1 weight loss drugs are also crashing the party. Novo Nordisktrumpets its new Wegovy pills in an ad featuring Kenan Thompson, DJ Khaled, Danielle Brooks, Ana Gasteyer, John C. Reilly and Danny Trejo. Telehealth firm Ro pitches its GLP-1s in an ad starring Serena Williams.
Hims & Hers, which recently introduced its own GLP-1 pill, says it gives everyone access to better health care, not just the wealthy.
Nostalgia
One way to get Americans feeling better? Evoke warm memories of the past.
T-Mobile features the Backstreet Boys singing a version of their 1999 hit “I Want It That Way.” Volkswagen goes all the way back to 1992 with a commercial set to House of Pain’s “Jump Around.”
And Xfinity reunites Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum in a tongue-in-cheek reimagining of 1993’s “Jurassic Park” that shows Xfinity restoring power to the island so nothing goes awry.
Record-breaking prices
Advertisers flock to the Super Bowl each year because so many people watch the big game. In 2025, a record 127.7 million U.S. viewers watched the game across television and streaming platforms.
Jura Liaukonyte, a professor of marketing in Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business, said companies that normally have to parse out ad dollars across broadcast and streaming platforms pay a premium for Super Bowl spots to reach a unified audience.
This year’s Super Bowl ads cost an average of $8 million per 30-second unit, but a handful of spots sold for $10 million-plus, a record, said Peter Lazarus, who leads advertising and partnerships for NBC Sports. He said he was calling February, with the Super Bowl, Olympics and the NBA All-Star Game, “legendary February.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com