I chose these six because each contains a focused creative move I would still discuss in a review room years later. That is different from claiming they were the six most commercially effective ads of the night. I did not work on them, and I keep personal creative judgment separate from campaign facts and measurable evidence.
Last reviewed: August 9, 2026
Super Bowl LVI was a crowded creative environment, and the ads that remain useful to study are not necessarily the loudest. The best examples below each make one central idea legible quickly: a product truth, a character device, an odd world, a behavioral contrast, a mnemonic, or a curiosity trigger.
Photo: Super Bowl LVI pre-game warmups at SoFi Stadium, February 13, 2022. Credit: Redspork02 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Key takeaway: The common thread is focus. Even when the execution is emotional, surreal, celebrity-led, or deliberately minimal, the strongest ads give viewers one clear thing to understand and remember.
1. Google Pixel — “Seen on Pixel”
Google used its Super Bowl spot to dramatize Real Tone, its effort to improve how Pixel cameras represent different skin tones. Rather than stack features, the ad built around one product problem and showed why the feature mattered to real people.
What I would study: make the product benefit the story. A technical feature becomes easier to remember when the creative explains the human problem it solves.
Campaign reference: Google campaign page
2. Carvana — “Oversharing Mom”
Carvana’s first national Super Bowl ad used one enthusiastic customer character who could not stop talking about the buying experience. That device gave the brand a way to communicate multiple proof points without turning the commercial into a conventional feature list.
What I would study: if a brief contains several reasons to believe, look for one character or narrative mechanism that can carry them naturally.
Campaign reference: Carvana campaign page
3. Irish Spring — “Welcome to Irish Spring”
Irish Spring built a bright, idyllic world around freshness, then made it strange. The tonal shift gives a familiar soap promise a memorable creative wrapper while keeping the product territory unmistakable.
What I would study: distinctiveness can come from changing the tone around a familiar benefit, not from abandoning the benefit itself.
Campaign reference: Irish Spring campaign reference
Good to know: These are creative case studies, not proof of commercial effectiveness. Without controlled lift, incrementality, or reliable sales evidence, use them to study mechanisms rather than claim that an ad “worked” financially.
4. Greenlight — Ty Burrell’s spending spree
Greenlight used Ty Burrell as a comic example of what not to do with money. The celebrity serves the financial-literacy message because the joke depends on visibly bad spending decisions rather than fame alone.
What I would study: celebrity works best when the person has a job inside the idea. If the concept collapses when the celebrity is removed, ask whether fame is doing all the creative work.
Campaign reference: Greenlight press page
5. Gong — the sound of winning
Gong’s 2022 spot leaned on a simple sonic joke: the brand name itself becomes the sound associated with sales success. Gong described the ad as a way to make viewers connect the sound of winning with the company name.
What I would study: a mnemonic does not need a complex story. Repetition, sound, and a clean brand link can do more memory work than an overloaded script.
Campaign reference: Gong campaign page
Expert tip: Before adding another joke, celebrity, feature, or scene, write the one sentence you want a viewer to remember the next day. If the new element does not reinforce that sentence, it is probably competing with the idea.
6. Coinbase — the bouncing QR code
Coinbase used a nearly empty screen and a bouncing QR code to contrast with the surrounding Super Bowl clutter. The company later said the intent was to pique curiosity and invite action. The stunt was highly distinctive, but it also illustrates an important operational lesson: an attention mechanism is only as strong as the experience after the click or scan.
What I would study: contrast can be a media strategy. In a field of maximalist ads, radical simplicity can become the interruption.
Campaign reference: Coinbase campaign page
Warning: Do not copy the surface tactic without the infrastructure. QR-led or response-heavy creative needs a fast landing experience, capacity for traffic spikes, analytics, and a fallback path if the primary destination fails.
What the six ads have in common
They use different tones, but each creates a clear center of gravity:
- Google ties emotion to a product problem.
- Carvana turns proof points into character behavior.
- Irish Spring makes a basic category promise feel strange and distinctive.
- Greenlight makes the celebrity embody the lesson.
- Gong builds a mnemonic around its own name.
- Coinbase uses visual emptiness as contrast.
The practical lesson is not “make simpler ads” in every case. It is to make the organizing idea easy to identify. Complexity can live around that idea, but it should not obscure it.
How to apply this to your next campaign
- Start with the one thing the audience should remember.
- Choose one mechanism that makes that point visible or audible.
- Cut any element that creates a second competing message.
- Design the broadcast or primary placement first, then expand longer versions around it.
- Validate the post-click or post-scan experience before launch.
For more campaign analysis, see my review of 11 innovative marketing campaigns from 2025 worth studying.
