The Super Bowl, The Aliens, and The Resistance

The 2025 Ad Bowl we didn't know we needed

It’s the day after the Super Bowl, and the world feels different somehow. It’s not quite the case of the Mondays, which was Coors Light’s clever ad campaign.

After the tumultuous news cycles of January, the Super Bowl ad world felt exuberantly normal. Celebrity, comedy, beer and snacks all showed up in full force, with brands spending millions to make us laugh a lot and cry a little. As usual the simplest, most visually compelling ads broke through, like Instacart’s ad uniting a disparate bunch o brand characters, and ahem, my agency’s own spot for Little Caesars (more below). Whereas other brands tried to build self-referential narratives and bloat their ads with celebrity (I see you trying to squeeze 6 minutes into 60 seconds, Dunkin) lost the plot - although I do have to commend Jeremy Strong for his award-worthy performance as Paul Revere.

Super Bowl x Kendrick

I watched the Super Bowl with a group of people who weren’t that familiar with Kendrick Lamar. His symbol-rich half-time show started with him kneeling (yes, like Colin Kaepernick) on a GNX, the car that his most recent album was named after. He had Samuel L. Jackson playing Uncle Sam, interpreting and critiquing the songs he played—and echoing a lot of the critique and complaint about his performance I was hearing from my fellow living room pundits. His dancers formed an American flag as he critiqued the nation, with Trump watching…and rumor had it that Trump left the stadium. And of course, he teased then dropped his Grammy-award winning Drake-burying hit Not Like Us.

All this during Black History Month and on the heels of the NFL erasing “end racism” from its end zones, a response to the 2020 Black Lives Matters protests.

What Kendrick’s performance did was two fold. It confused and even troubled people who aren’t familiar with the rich layers of meaning Kendrick Lamar has established over six albums. And it created a not-so-secret language of protest and triumph for those who are (including Serena Williams, who had a cameo during the show).

Super Bowl Ads x Technology

In 2022, crypto companies were flush with cash and took over the Super Bowl. This was before we knew Sam Bankman Fried was a huckster, and FTX blanketed the market with a skeptical Larry David ad.

This year it’s AI that’s having its Super Bowl moment. OpenAI launched an animated ad, apparently made mostly by humans, Meta dusted off a whole host of Chris’s to advertise its Meta glasses, and Google kept pushing its AI features with human-centric storytelling. Even GoDaddy weighed in. Interesting that these companies creating world-changing AI aren’t using their own technology to make advertisements.

So will AI go the way of crypto? I’d put my money on no; unlike the crypto craze of the past, AI will face challenges but it won’t succumb to the scamocracy that crypto did.

Super Bowl x Gender

With all the anti-woke rhetoric in the air, it was heartening to see a handful of ads stay vocal about women and girls in sports. Nike showed up with a deep bench of amazing athletes, Dove ran an ad on keeping girls confident in sports, and an ad from the NFL advocated for varsity flag football in all states.

Carl’s Jr was getting headlines for bringing back bikini-clad burger eaters as a symbol of a return to outdated gender roles, but their star Alix Earle also showed up in a bikini in a Poppi ad—a company she’s also investing in. And the raciest ad of the night was one that ended with Wanda Sykes encouraging women to get a mammogram.

Whimsy, Weird and Just Aliens

Some ads leaned into the whimsical—including my company’s Little Caesars commercial with Eugene Levy’s flying eyebrows, Pringle’s run-away mustaches, and Coors Light’s Monday Sloths.

Others were just plain weird. Coffeemate’s dancing tongues, Tubi’s cowboy-hat-head person, Mountain Dew’s seal singing Seal.

And aliens showed up multiple times. Doritos, Totinos and HexClad Pans all showed aliens enjoying their products—all on the heels of the Pentagon releasing its report on UFOs.

What Was Missing?

Besides Glenn Powell showing off his Ram, this year car companies were fairly quiet. Although they’ve been reducing ad spend over the last 10 years, this year the uncertainty around tariffs and EV subsidies have car companies taking a little break.
Last year, beauty brands got bold in their Super Bowl ad spend; this year only e.l.f. returned to the TV screens. But on the social side, Nyx partnered with DraftKings for a make-up/sports betting collab you didn’t see coming, but could also easily miss.

On to Super Bowl 60!