Super Bowl LVII marketing roundtable: CMOs on creativity, ROI, and culture

Executive overview

Seven CMOs behind Super Bowl LVII ads join Gary Vaynerchuk and Jim Stengel to debrief what worked, why, and what it cost to get wrong. The Super Bowl remains one of the last platforms where 100M+ people consume content simultaneously — but vanilla work at $10–14M all-in is a catastrophic waste.

The brands that win treat the Super Bowl as a cultural moment, not a media buy — combining sharp creative briefs, fearless ideation, and year-round momentum measurement.

On celebrity use and pattern interruption

• Celebrity use is justified when it triggers genuine recall or emotion, not just awareness
• Nostalgia is underpriced — the Ben Stiller/Steve Martin "clueless recall" device worked because it layered meaning onto the product claim
• The alternative to celebrities: stand up a mascot; brand mascots deliver long-term ARB value without controversy risk
• Breaking patterns (Tubi's broadcast hack, QR codes) earns disproportionate attention relative to spend
• Continuity with the same celebrity across years (Will Ferrell for GM EVs) builds authentic engagement, not just awareness

GM and the Netflix partnership

• GM used Super Bowl to signal a strategic shift: EVs normalized through pop culture, not product specs
• The Netflix partnership was over six months in the making — not a quick activation
• Will Ferrell became a de facto GM employee, shooting internal Yammer videos for factory workers
• Stock price responded positively twice: once on earnings, again when the Netflix partnership was announced
• GM's frame: Super Bowl spend is justified partly by internal cultural signal to employees and investors

Pepsi Zero Sugar: trial as a Super Bowl brief

• Pepsi's brief was unusually product-focused: drive trial of a reformulated Pepsi Zero Sugar
• The tension: consumers distrust paid endorsements, especially on Super Bowl Sunday
• The solution: lean into that distrust — Steve Martin and Ben Stiller perform "is it acting or real?" to shift the burden of proof to the viewer
• 10 million product samples distributed online alongside the spot
• Pepsi has four of the top five all-time Ad Meter spots; internal competitive fire between beverages and snacks divisions sustains creative quality
• Post-halftime-show era: the brand still drove close to 30 billion earned media impressions through coordinated social, PR, and in-game presence

Planters: mascots, culture, and the roast concept

• Killing Mr. Peanut years earlier locked emotional equity in the character; the brand has been building on that ever since
• Each year Planters recalibrates: where is culture, where does the brand need to go, then find the unexpected connection
• The brief was essentially "enjoy the peanuts" — maximum creative latitude
• In-store execution has improved year-on-year; Walmart gave Planters its first major end-cap support this cycle
• During COVID, Planters skipped official Super Bowl placement but stayed culturally present through small acts of generosity

Rakuten: building brand awareness in the US

• Rakuten is globally known (Barcelona jersey, Golden State Warriors jersey) but lacks US consumer understanding of what it actually does
• Four-point year-on-year brand awareness lift; 10% increase in buyers over the year — the real ROI metrics, not day-of clicks
• In-house brand and creative team produced the work; the Super Bowl functions as a culture-building moment internally as much as externally
• Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso, year one) and Alicia Silverstone (Clueless, year two) — both built on nostalgia and character familiarity
• App downloads, shopping, signups, and search volume all spike on game day, but year-long lift is the actual proof point

Tubi: hacking the broadcast

• Mischief developed the idea of faking a channel change mid-broadcast to interrupt viewer pattern recognition
• Fox Sports hosting the Super Bowl made the hack possible — CMO Robert Gottlieb pushed to make it look authentic
• The concept emerged from a soft pitch in a meeting with Lachlan Murdoch; it was never a planned campaign
• Tubi doesn't pay for commercial time and doesn't control when spots air — requiring flexible creative that can move last minute
• The Q4 slot looked like a liability but benefited from a close, high-tension game

NFL and the scale of the platform

• Nielsen's 113M viewer figure undercounts actual Super Bowl audience — custom analysis puts live viewership well over 200M
• The Super Bowl is the single most powerful social moment of the year
• Hype builds from the moment teams arrive for opening night; brands that activate early capture cultural air cover before the game
• Global expansion (Germany game, London) is a major strategic focus; the Chiefs' current dynasty window is a rare opportunity for international fandom growth

On creativity and fearless ideation

• Good ideas come from anyone — including people who have worked at a company for seven days
• Too many creative meetings are killed by status hierarchies and subjective taste policing
• Speaking half-formed ideas aloud is underrated; the Tubi broadcast hack originated from a casual soft pitch
• Eliminating fear of judgment in creative meetings is a structural imperative, not a cultural nicety
• The VaynerMedia "PACK" framework: platform (understand the distribution) + culture (know your consumer's cultural context) = contextual relevance
• Tight, specific briefs work better for day-to-day social; wide briefs give creative teams room but risk "creative swirl"