Once a year, the Super Bowl briefly stops being about football and turns into advertising’s most expensive, high-stakes group chat.
It’s the one night when creatives watch TV with notebooks open, Slack threads firing and opinions forming faster than a 30-second spot can land its punchline.
This year was no different – big budgets, bigger celebrities, a few brave swings, a few safe ones – and plenty for the industry to argue over the next morning.
Mediaweek asked a cross-section of Australia’s best creatives to weigh in on the Super Bowl ads they actually loved, the ones that cut through the hype, and why some ideas stuck while others vanished before the final whistle.
Becky Morriss, Creative Director, Clemenger BBDO
Her Choice? Instacart starring Ben Stiller
“Instacart’s Super Bowl spot genuinely made me giggle because it committed fully to an idea and didn’t overcomplicate things. While many brands leaned hard on celebrity for celebrity’s sake, this one felt playful, absurd, and self-aware, with a really strong visual aesthetic.
“Knowing it was directed by Spike Jonze makes complete sense. You can feel that creative intent in every frame. The humour isn’t throwaway. It’s choreographed, cinematic and deliberately weird, but in a way that feels thoughtful rather than chaotic.
“Ben Stiller never feels like stunt casting. He grounds the ad with great timing and warmth, letting the comedy serve the product truth rather than distract from it. It feels like Instacart really understands what it is and is happy to have a bit of fun with its role in everyday life.
“Compared to previous years, this Super Bowl felt safer overall, with a handful of standouts like Absolut, Squarespace and Claude. But for me, Instacart stood out by embracing entertainment and craft. It didn’t try to say everything. It focused on being memorable and enjoyable, and that confidence really paid off.”
John Schonogevel, Head of Strategy, Those That Do
His choice? No one.
“It should be easy to write about the Superbowl ads right? So much great stuff? Work that elicits an emotional response? Well not this year.
“There were big brands doing what they always do – celebrity, humour and entertainment (Instacart, Hellman’s, Pringles). There were big brands doing the same idea as before, just differently (Dove, Budweiser, Uber Eats). There were a few who went so far as to incorporate the celebrity into the idea (Raisin Bran, Fanatics Sportsbook, TurboTax).
“The only thing that moved me, that made me sit up on the sofa, was the host broadcaster’s Denzel Washington-narrated self-promotion of their own Winter Olympics coverage. So the winner is… NBC.”
Micah Walker, Founder, Bear Meets Eagle On Fire
His choice? The Jeffrey Epstein survivors PSA
“Not sure I have an absolute favourite this year. As with every year, there’s a mix of self-important emotional mush and a lot of celebrity shrapnel.
“The best of the expected celebrity cameo approach, I’d give to Instacart. Feels to me like the best of the Super Bowl silliness, and I like that they focused on bananas and hurting Ben Stiller.
“As far as the most unexpected break from the formula, I’d say the much-discussed Anthropic campaign stands out most. In particular, the “How can I communicate better with my mom?” spot gets that AI awkwardness just right.
“On a somewhat heavier note, I think we should all pay tribute to the Epstein survivors PSA calling out the US Department of Justice for the lack of transparency and action on their behalf. It’s not a great ad in any way, but it’s easily the most important message to air this year.”
Amber Groves, Creative Strategy Director, Weave
Her choice? Relax Your Tight End featuring Rob Gronkowski
“In a Super Bowl overflowing with ads that overwhelmingly favour celebrities, weak gags, and nostalgia over memorability, Novartis’ ‘Relax Your Tight End’ spot provided a rare and delightful combination of creative insight and messaging simplicity.
“By hijacking a well-known football term and reinterpreting it as a universal human tension, Novartis sidesteps clinical stiffness and earns awareness through disarming humour and tight messaging… I can easily see how this spot could convince the millions of NFL-congregating men to pull their finger out and take care of their health.
“This is what the Superbowl needs more of – ads that are culturally aligned and contextually relevant, ads that leverage a real consumer insight, ads whose executions are both engaging… and a little cheeky.
“In a lukewarm sea of ads that feel like they’ve been reverse-engineered from a ChatGPT prompt, this one felt like it was written by humans, for humans.”
David Jackson, Executive Creative Director, Apparent
His choice? Anthropic and Claude AI
“The ads that caught my attention were Claude’s spots. In a world of big-dollar ads all pushing US products, Claude’s was a really understated way of setting itself apart from its competitors, particularly ChatGPT.
“During the biggest ad spend moment of the year, when every spot is about spectacle, their ads cut through with simple moments of advice like training or speaking to your mother.
“They used these universal truths to land their message and, more importantly, brought back something that’s been lost a little in the advertising scene post covid.
“It felt akin to the Cola Wars and Mac vs PC, which was great. Be interesting to see how ChatGPT responds outside of Altman’s rant on LinkedIn.”
Adrian Elton, Creative, Adrian Elton Creative
His choice? Anthropic and Claude AI
“Amidst the avalanche of ads for this year’s Stupor-Bowl, perhaps the one that felt like it spoke most aptly to this particular moment was the Anthropic ad that took steely aim at Open AI’s ChatGPT, landing an almighty kick in the proverbial ‘nads.
“The simplicity and clarity of the dramatisation of the ChatGPT bot, from buff gym trainer to bespectacled university professor, all underscored the profound danger when trusted confidantes go rogue.
“The disconcerting pauses before responding to earnest questions, accompanied by the vacant eyes and beatific smiles, really mirrored the ‘think’ time before ‘Chat’ responds, as well as the toxic-positivity of the AI linguistics, which manage to give a positive spin on anything, no matter how decidedly ill-advised that might be. The art-direction expertly doubled down on the ‘ick’-factor.”
Sam Boyd, Creative Strategy Lead, BCM Media and Creative
His Choice? Hellmanns
“I can only imagine the effort and gymnastics required by any agency to get an idea across the line these days for the Super Bowl, let alone push the boat out. Which is why, credit where it is due, it was good to see a handful of brands lean back into absurdity this year.
“Spots like Hellmann’s Meal Diamond or Instacart’s Choose Your Bananas reminded us that the Super Bowl opportunity is still, at heart, a branded entertainment moment.
“But what I felt missing this year was the disruption. No one broke the frame. No one messed with the system. Almost every brand treated the Super Bowl opportunity as a 30-60 second placement, rather than a cultural moment to be exploited before, during and spoken about after the game.
“That’s what made ideas like Coinbase’s QR Code, Reddit’s Superb Owl, Tubi’s Interface Interruption from previous years so powerful, or even earlier examples like Newcastle Brown Ale’s Band of Brands. They didn’t just run an ad in the Super Bowl. They created a brand conversation before it. They hijacked it. They extended it and let it live on in conversations long after the game finished.”
Charles Baylis, Executive Creative Director, ATime&Place
His Choice? Jurassic Park
“I like this one because it borrows celebrity in a way that doesn’t feel desperate.
“For a lot of the Super Bowl ads it felt like there was a formula; ‘get a celeb to sing it to a tune everyone knows, change the words and pop the brand in’.
“The cameos here are justified. And personally, I still can’t get past the fact that one guy in the original film basically ruined Jurassic Park for all of us.”
Daniel Borghesi, Creative Director M+C Saatchi
His Choice? Instacart
“Silliness is back and I’m loving it. The year’s winners are bringing joy in really simple, visually striking ways.
“For me, Instacart is hard to beat. Wonderful craft, and I don’t think there will ever be a funnier line than ‘I need more lift’.
“Then you’ve got Claude’s spots, a masterclass in performance and restraint. Uber is back again with another banger, but did we expect anything less? And of course, there’s XFinity’s brilliant take on Jurassic Park.”
Matt Eastwood, Creative Director, Thompson Spencer
His Choice? Squarespace
“This year, AI again sucks up all the oxygen in the conversation – each one attempting to be more humane but never quite getting there.
“Most superbowl ads feel like a SNL skit on fast forward. The winners are the ads that showed restraint. A single, clean idea, sharpened by the right celebrity.
“For me the winner of the day was Squarespace. Emma Stone in stark black-and-white noir cuts through the oversaturated clutter- and pulls you into her dramatic frustration of a taken domain. Her performance shines, film craft shines, and Squarespace shines.”
Tim O’Connor, General Manager, APAC Sales, Vevo
His Choice? Pringles featuring Sabrina Carpenter
“What really stood out to me in this year’s Super Bowl ads was how clearly brands reach consumers through tapping into music fandom – whether that is through a nostalgic play or featuring current popular artists.
“The Backstreet Boys ad is a good example of that done properly. It didn’t treat nostalgia as a joke or a shortcut. Off the back of their Vegas residency, the fandom is very much alive, and the ad tapped into that energy in a way that felt earned. It spoke to people who still care, not just people who vaguely remember the band.
“The Sabrina Carpenter and Pringles creative worked for a similar reason. It leaned straight into Sabrina’s aesthetic – visually it felt like it could have come from one of her own music videos, which fans know inside out. Sabrina’s videos are among the most watched on Vevo this year, and that level of alignment doesn’t go unnoticed.”
Sian Binder & Lea Egan, Group Creative Directors, Special
Their Choice? Uber Eats Football is For Food
“You can tell a lot about the state of America from this year’s super bowl ads… Agencies and clients have an entertain-at-any-cost mentality with big splurges on directors (Spike, Taika, and Yorgos). But to be honest a lot of this entertainment has come at the expense of ideas, which seem to be pretty light on.
“We have to give a shout out to the Uber Eats Football is For Food spot from our Special friends in the US. (It’s practically in our contract to do so!) But it really stands out to us for at least having a strong idea behind it. It really ups the ante on the spots from the previous years with the interactive element of building your own commercial.
“And when it comes to just making us smile, Meal Diamond spruiking mayonnaise, and the Is It Cake spot were really fun.”
Ben van Rooy, Founder, Human Digital
His Choice? The Halftime Show
“Super Bowl LX delivered big budgets and familiar faces but little worth remembering. This wasn’t a failure of craft. The production values were stunning and the celebrity wrangling was impressive. But somewhere between the brief and the broadcast most brands choose safety over significance.
“Bad Bunny’s halftime show did what most of the advertising couldn’t. It created a moment people actually talked about. Confident, culturally rooted and unmistakably itself it didn’t try to please everyone. It spoke clearly to its audience and invited the rest of the world along. While the ads aimed for polite approval the halftime show delivered authentic expression and reminded us that cultural relevance is claimed through conviction not manufactured through celebrity casting.
“Super Bowl LX advertising wasn’t a failure. It was a mirror. The craft is there. The budgets are there. The talent is there. What’s missing is the courage to use them for something beyond risk mitigation. Brands don’t win by being careful. They win by being clear.”
Paul Sharp, Creative Director, Emotive
His Choice? Jeep
“Most clients only want to celebrate the positivity that their brand or product brings… when someone does choose to ‘do dark’, and does it well, it really shines.
“Jeep’s ad for their Cherokee Hybrid starts out like a straightforward why-did-no-one-think-of-that-before premise for a road trip to show off the car’s outward bounds potential; Billy Bass Fish synonymously sings ‘Take me to the river’ and a kid takes it to heart and pleads with his folks to let him do just that – cue Jeep hitting the high road.
“What we don’t realise is this is less an ad about the car’s outward bounds potential and more about its internal safety, thus when the kid finally releases Billy into nature, the whole sweet story turns hilariously sour.”