Celebrities may no longer be winning at the Big Game.
An array of Super Bowl advertisers turned up with creative ideas that shunned the typical famous faces making quick-paced jokes in favor of concepts meant to inspire.
Nike burnished a host of female athletes backed by the Led Zeppelin chestnut “Whole Lotta Love.” Pfizer took to the Super Bowl screen to rally viewers to fight against cancer. Google tried to push consumers past their ambivalence toward artificial intelligence by showing how the technology helped a man spend meaningful children. Frito-Lay avoided the typical line of “snack-vertising” when it did an ad for Lay’s potato chips that saluted the farmers who grew the tubers that make the product every year, T-Mobile, which for years has relied on A-list cameos from John Travolta and Jason Momoa, in 2025 talked about technology and utility. Rocket Cos. used a version of John Denver’s “Country Roads, Take Me Home” to talk about Americans striving for home ownership (a separate component that aimed to get the crowd at New Orleans Caesar’s Superdome to sing along, however, generated mixed results).
“I’ll admit that I got chills” from the Rocket spot, says Joey Johnson, creative director at Mother L.A.
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The agency executive felt that ads that played off sentiment may have been more memorable, because it “felt like they breathed a lot more,” while many of the traditional celebrity commercials were so stuffed with jokes and cameos they got waylaid from making their message stick.
To be sure, the stars still turned out, with Drew Barrymore, Orlando Bloom, Eugene Levy, Willem Dafoe, and Matthew McConaughey all doing a turn for cruise lines, pizza, beer and food delivery., Morgan Freeman joined Dan Levy and Heidi Gardner in their second Super Bowl turn for Homes.com. Sydney Sweeney made a quick cameo in a spot for Hellmann’s that tapped Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan to reprise a critical scene from the 1989 film “When Harry Met Sally.” Harrison Ford turned up in the fourth quarter to tell viewers they could buy electric cars or combustion engines, whatever they wished (but hopefully something made by the ad’s backer, Stellantis’ Jeep). After all, this is America.
It’s tough to break away from the traditional Super Bowl formula. Fans expect to be entertained, and talking about social and cultural issues can often hit a wrong note, particularly in an era when consumers are more tribal and polarized. “I think brands need to, in this specific moment, show up in a way so they are part of entertainment,” says Daniel Lobatón, chief creative officer, North America at David, an agency that has supervised many Super Bowl campaigns. “I don’t think preachiness will work.”
Ad executives felt Fox offered a somber stage on which the commercials had to play. The network kicked off the game by nodding to recent violence in New Orleans and the wildfires around Los Angeles. Add that to a citizenry that just came through a wild presidential election, and Madison Avenue may have felt the national mood wasn’t ready for more than the usual stuff.
“I think it’s kind of hard for people to come up with something that feels very timely and of the world today without rubbing anybody the wrong way,” says Johnson.
Many of the executives overseeing this year’s efforts were mindful of the ground upon which they tread. “We really want to entertain, to make people laugh,” says Todd Allen, senior vice president of marketing for Bud Light. Consumers are “craving” levity, says Laura Jones, chief marketing officer of Instacart. Her company’s Super Bowl ad threaded a needle, avoiding the use of celebrities while enlisting an array of top ad “spokescharacters” like the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Green Giant.
Some Super Bowl commercials weren’t quite sure where to go or how to get there. After running a somber ad in the 2024 Super Bowl aimed at fighting hate and bigotry, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism tapped Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady in a spot that had the celebrities squaring off against one another, ticking off reasons why people don’t like one another. But the duo seemed to lack the gravitas that the issue demanded.
Others were more sure of their direction. A clever ad from Unilever’s Dove showed a toddler hustling down a street, all to the strains of a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” by H.E.R. The ad talks about making sure young women feel confident about themselves. An ad for Poppi, the probiotic soda, relied on popular digital-media creators to highlight an alternative to typical soft drinks.
Advertisers seemed eager to evoke a smile or recognition, and then get off the stage. “People are working so hard to avoid offending people,” says Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. More ads seemed to focus on “farms and suburbs and homes, and a lot of core traditional values,” he says, perhaps in reaction to the 2024 presidential election. “This is not a very urban Super Bowl.”
Taken together after a night of viewing, the commercials seemed “really wholesome,” says Lobatón. “NO one crossed a line or made too much of a statement.” That may not make for the most memorable Super Bowl advertising line-up, but in 2025, at least it made for something that didn’t get anyone terribly upset. That may be all we can ask for.