I watch Super Bowl work with a creative director’s bias: I care less about who “won the night” than whether the idea is clear, ownable and worth the price of the attention. These are my selections, not a neutral ranking. I did not work on the campaigns below, and my creative judgment is kept separate from verified facts about the work and any reported results.
Last reviewed: August 9, 2026
Super Bowl ads are expensive, crowded and unusually unforgiving. The most useful 2024 examples were not necessarily the loudest. They made one idea easy to understand, built the brand into the joke or story, and gave viewers something specific to remember.
This is a practitioner’s selection rather than a ranking of every Super Bowl LVIII commercial, and creative praise is not treated as proof of sales impact.
Key takeaway: The strongest lesson from Super Bowl 2024 is restraint. A big media buy does not require a complicated message; it makes clarity more valuable.
1. Reese’s — make the product news the idea
Reese’s used its Super Bowl return to introduce the Caramel Big Cup. The campaign’s central mechanism was simple: people react wildly to change, then reverse course when they learn the change is caramel. The One Club’s 2024 case page confirms that the work was built around launching the new product during the Super Bowl.
That matters because the product is not an accessory to the entertainment. It is the reason the joke exists. The test I would use is: if the product disappeared, would the concept still work almost unchanged? If yes, the brand may be paying for entertainment that someone else could own.
Campaign reference: Reese’s “Yes!” case study.
2. CeraVe — turn a name joke into a campaign system
CeraVe’s Michael CeraVe campaign turned the similarity between Michael Cera’s name and CeraVe into a weeks-long fake-origin story. CeraVe’s own post-campaign release says the stunt involved Michael Cera, dermatologists and creators before the Super Bowl reveal clarified that the brand is developed with dermatologists, not Michael Cera.
The useful part is not simply celebrity casting. The celebrity was structurally necessary to the idea. The pre-game sightings, social content and reveal all pointed to one claim the brand wanted remembered.
Good to know: Celebrity works best when the person is part of the creative mechanism, not a substitute for one. Ask what the famous person makes possible that the brand could not communicate as sharply without them.
Campaign reference: CeraVe’s Michael CeraVe campaign release.
3. Google Pixel — demonstrate a feature through a human story
Google’s “Javier in Frame” centered Guided Frame, an accessibility feature that helps blind and low-vision users take photos using audio cues, high-contrast animations and haptic feedback. Google also worked with blind filmmaker Adam Morse to shape the visual approach.
The spot works as a product demonstration without feeling like a feature checklist. The technology has a visible job inside the story: helping Javier document moments in his life. Google’s current accessibility documentation continues to describe Guided Frame as a supported Pixel camera feature, which helps separate the enduring product capability from the historical ad itself.
For a technical product, my takeaway is to show the feature solving a recognizable problem. Explanation becomes easier when the audience can see why the capability matters.
Campaign reference: Google’s “Javier in Frame” article.
4. Etsy — launch the product and the positioning together
Etsy used its first big-game ad to introduce Gift Mode, an interactive gifting hub combining AI and human curation. Etsy said the Super Bowl campaign was intended to make gifting a space the company could more clearly own while bringing more buyers to its sellers.
The creative idea therefore had a business job beyond awareness: explain a new shopping behavior and reinforce a strategic category position. That is more useful than treating a major media moment as a disconnected brand spectacle.
Expert tip: When launching a feature with a major campaign, write the one sentence you want people to repeat afterward. If the product benefit, brand position and creative premise do not support the same sentence, simplify before adding more executions.
Campaign reference: Etsy’s Gift Mode big-game announcement.
5. Volkswagen — use nostalgia to connect past and future
Volkswagen’s “An American Love Story” marked 75 years of the brand in the United States. Volkswagen’s release says the two-minute extended film traced the story from the first Beetles imported in 1949 to the 2024 arrival of the ID. Buzz, while a one-minute version aired during Super Bowl LVIII.
Nostalgia works here because it has a destination. The historical material is not just a montage of old logos and beloved cars; it gives context to a current product chapter. That makes the heritage feel like evidence of continuity rather than a substitute for a contemporary message.
Campaign reference: Volkswagen’s “An American Love Story” release.
6. Dunkin’ — build a celebrity joke around existing brand truth
Dunkin’s DunKings spot used Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Tom Brady and Jennifer Lopez in a deliberately ridiculous boy-band setup. The humor leaned into Affleck’s long-running public association with Dunkin and then extended beyond the ad into a named DunKings platform, products and merchandise.
What makes the execution useful to study is the fit between celebrity, brand and cultural context. The famous faces increase scale, but the premise still feels specific to Dunkin. That is a stronger use of celebrity than dropping a recognizable person into a generic script.
Campaign reference: Dunkin’s official DunKings release.
Warning: Do not infer campaign effectiveness from memorability, awards or press coverage alone. Without controlled brand-lift, sales or incrementality evidence, these examples support creative and strategic lessons—not claims that the ads caused business growth.
What these six ads have in common
The executions look different, but the underlying discipline is similar:
- They make one central idea easy to repeat.
- The product or brand truth is built into the creative mechanism.
- The format fits the broadcast moment instead of feeling like a compressed longer film.
- The campaign can extend beyond one airing without changing its core idea.
- The viewer is given a reason to remember the brand, not just the celebrity or gag.
For a smaller brand, the lesson is not to imitate Super Bowl scale. It is to borrow the discipline. A clear product truth, one memorable mechanism and a well-chosen distribution context can travel farther than a campaign overloaded with messages.
Related reading
For a broader cross-industry benchmark, see my review of 11 innovative marketing campaigns from 2025 worth studying.
Media credit: Allegiant Stadium during Super Bowl LVIII preparations, photographed February 10, 2024 by Jerry Glaser for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. U.S. federal government work; public domain in the United States. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
