Super Bowl 2025 ads reviewed: Nike wins, brands play it safe

Executive overview

Most brands at Super Bowl 2025 over-indexed on safety — leaning into nostalgia and celebrity without earning relevance. The result: millions spent on spots nobody will remember by Friday.

A great Super Bowl ad must be ownable, memorable, and relevant. Most brands hit one, missed the other two. Nike stood apart by saying something that mattered. Rocket created a first-of-its-kind live integration. Everyone else largely blended.

Brands that played it safe traded memorability for comfort — and got neither.

The three tests every Super Bowl ad must pass

• Ownable: viewers must instantly know whose brand it is
• Memorable: if they can't recall it happened, the spend is wasted
• Relevant: relevance creates the multiplier effect that extends a 30-second spot into lasting impact
• This year, most brands over-indexed on ownability and underdelivered on the other two

Ad placement strategy

• Early and mid-game placement is the safe default — broader audience, less risk
• Late placement only makes sense if the game is close; a blowout sends viewers to the kitchen
• Non-buyers can still participate authentically if they have a genuine connection to the moment

Celebrity: when it works and when it doesn't

• Celebrity only earns its fee when the fit is self-evident — if the audience has to ask why, it's a miss
• Matthew McConaughey's omnipresence ("the McConnaissance") reflected brands playing it safe with broad demographic appeal, not strategic casting
• Ben Affleck and Dunkin' works — there's a real, known connection
• Hellmann's nailed it: recreating the When Harry Met Sally diner scene with Sydney Sweeney as the mic-drop cameo — the celebrity choice was immediately legible
• Stella Artois (David Beckham, Matt Damon) spoke to a specific demographic but lacked the memorability for lasting ROI

Winners

• Nike "So Win" — the night's standout: unmistakably ownable, visually distinctive black-and-white aesthetic, celebrated women's sports without being preachy; the only brand that made a substantive statement
• Rocket — achieved genuine NBDB (never been done before) by syncing the ad narrative with Country Roads playing live in the stadium; a real integrated moment, not a gimmick
• Bud Light — understood its audience, delivered a clear red-blooded Americana message with precision
• Budweiser — the baby Clydesdale journey hit the hallmark-channel emotional note it aimed for
• Michelob Ultra — Willem Dafoe and Catherine O'Hara in a pickleball spot caught the cultural moment; the visual effects integration (Autodesk Maya/Arnold) showed technology as the magic behind the magic
• OpenAI/ChatGPT — simplicity and pointillism-style human animation embodied the message that AI amplifies human creativity; the ChatGPT reveal at the end was a textbook mic drop
• Jeep (Harrison Ford) — one of the few unity-themed ads that didn't feel fake; it let viewers see themselves in it without forcing a political read

Misses

• Tubi — pushed memorability so hard with its unsettling skin-cowboy-hat creative that it became repulsive; people left the room
• Seal-as-a-seal and the Coffee Mate dancing tongue: creative pushed in directions that didn't serve the brand
• Brands that spent heavily on nostalgia and vague Americana without an ownable hook will see no lasting ROI

Purpose-led vs. cause-led

• Purpose-led: standing on values core to your business — Nike on gender equity in sports is on-brand because athletes are its business
• Cause-led: commenting on issues tangential to your business — no credibility, no payoff
• Brands shouldn't fear putting their actual customer base on screen; avoiding diverse representation while chasing diverse spending is a contradiction
• The halftime show (Kendrick Lamar, Serena Williams cameo) made the cultural statement that brands were too risk-averse to attempt

The ROI question

• Three questions every brand must answer before buying: What do I want to say? Who do I want to say it to? How long do I want them to think on it?
• Brands that couldn't answer all three clearly wasted their spend
• Boring is bad for business — blending in means nobody remembers you, your message, or your brand
• Opting out can be the right call; not every Super Bowl is the right moment for every brand