![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/AP26030718859027.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
At a\u00a0difficult time\u00a0for America, Super Bowl advertisers ask viewers to take care of themselves and others \u2014 and maybe even crack a smile.<\/p>\n
Ring\u00a0shows how neighbors can use their doorbell cameras to find lost pets. A\u00a0Budweiser\u00a0Clydesdale protects a bald eagle chick from the rain.\u00a0Novartis\u00a0touts a blood test that can detect prostate cancer.\u00a0Toyota reminds viewers to wear their seatbelts.<\/p>\n
Mister Rogers is invoked twice: Lady Gaga sings his classic \u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?\u201d in a tearjerker for\u00a0Rocket Companies\u00a0while the\u00a0National Football League\u00a0uses \u201cYou Are Special\u201d to promote its work with youth sports organizations.<\/p>\n
America is uneasy. U.S.\u00a0consumer confidence\u00a0fell to its lowest level since 2014 in January. The killings of two protesters by federal officers in Minneapolis last month led to\u00a0widespread outrage. And\u00a0winter weather\u00a0has been brutal across much of the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a collective trauma. Everybody is stressed out. It doesn\u2019t matter who you are, it\u2019s something that\u2019s impacting everyone,\u201d said Vann Graves, the executive director of the Brandcenter at Virginia Commonwealth University.<\/p>\n
Super Bowl ads, he said, give people a much-needed respite and a rare shared moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a bit of time that we can just be human and be silly and enjoy ourselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There is plenty of silliness in this year\u2019s commercials. Sabrina Carpenter tries to build the perfect man out of\u00a0Pringles. Benson Boone and Ben Stiller play a disco duo doing flips over\u00a0Instacart. Andy Samberg, playing \u201cMeal Diamond,\u201d squirts\u00a0Hellmann\u2019s\u00a0mayonnaise on the sandwiches of Elle Fanning and other deli customers.<\/p>\n
Polar bears \u2014 Coca-Cola\u2019s traditional mascots \u2014 share a\u00a0Pepsi\u00a0in an ad that spoofs last year\u2019s\u00a0viral kiss cam. Adrien Brody can\u2019t stop overacting in a commercial for\u00a0TurboTax.<\/p>\n
Delivery services try to outdo each other. George Clooney appears in a\u00a0Grubhub\u00a0ad to promote free delivery on orders of $50 or more.\u00a0Uber Eats\u00a0enlists Matthew McConaughey to convince Bradley Cooper and Parker Posey that football is a conspiracy to make people hungry. And Rapper 50 Cent trolls\u00a0Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs\u00a0in an ad for\u00a0DoorDash.<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence is all over the Super Bowl airwaves.<\/p>\n
Oakley Meta\u00a0touts its AI-enabled glasses in two action-packed spots showing Spike Lee, Marshawn Lynch and others using the glasses to film video and answer questions.\u00a0Wix\u00a0debuts an ad for Wix Harmony, which uses AI tools for website design.<\/p>\n
Svedka Vodka\u00a0enlisted Silverside AI, an AI studio, to help create its ad, which features its robot mascot FemBot dancing alongside her male counterpart, BroBot.<\/p>\n
Like AI itself, AI ads aren\u2019t without\u00a0controversy. AI developer\u00a0Anthropicis airing a pair of commercials pointing out that Claude, its chatbot, doesn\u2019t have ads. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took issue with that in a recent\u00a0social media post; OpenAI said last month it will start testing ads as a way to keep ChatGPT free.<\/p>\n
Amazon\u00a0also strikes a nerve with an ad starring Chris Hemsworth that pokes fun of people\u2019s fears of AI. The ad is running just days after Amazon\u00a0laid off 16,000 corporate workers, some of whom\u00a0may be replaced\u00a0with AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspect this is meant to be funny, but it might reinforce some people\u2019s very real concerns about AI,\u201d said Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n
Super Bowl ads still celebrate snacks. Bowen Yang, Scarlett Johansson and Jon Hamm team up to pitch\u00a0Ritz\u00a0crackers. A retiring potato farmer passes the farm along to his daughter in a heartfelt ad for\u00a0Lay\u2019s.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s also a focus on health. Octavia Spencer and Sofia Vergara urge people to test for kidney disease in an ad for\u00a0Boehringer Ingelheim.<\/p>\n
Mike Tyson talks about his sister\u2019s death from obesity in an ad urging people to eat real, unprocessed food. The ad was paid for by\u00a0MAHA Center Inc., a nonprofit led by Tony Lyons, a publisher and key ally of U.S. Health Secretary\u00a0Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n
GLP-1 weight loss drugs\u00a0are also crashing the party.\u00a0Novo Nordisktrumpets its new Wegovy pills in an ad featuring Kenan Thompson, DJ Khaled, Danielle Brooks, Ana Gasteyer, John C. Reilly and Danny Trejo. Telehealth firm\u00a0Ro\u00a0pitches its GLP-1s in an ad starring Serena Williams.<\/p>\n
Hims & Hers, which recently introduced its own GLP-1 pill, says it gives everyone access to better health care, not just the wealthy.<\/p>\n
One way to get Americans feeling better? Evoke warm memories of the past.<\/p>\n
T-Mobile\u00a0features the Backstreet Boys singing a version of their 1999 hit \u201cI Want It That Way.\u201d\u00a0Volkswagen\u00a0goes all the way back to 1992 with a commercial set to House of Pain\u2019s \u201cJump Around.\u201d<\/p>\n
And\u00a0Xfinity\u00a0reunites Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum in a tongue-in-cheek reimagining of 1993\u2019s \u201cJurassic Park\u201d that shows Xfinity restoring power to the island so nothing goes awry.<\/p>\n
Advertisers flock to the Super Bowl each year because so many people watch the big game.\u00a0In 2025, a record 127.7 million U.S. viewers watched the game\u00a0across television and streaming platforms.<\/p>\n
Jura Liaukonyte, a professor of marketing in Cornell University\u2019s SC Johnson College of Business, said companies that normally have to parse out ad dollars across broadcast and streaming platforms pay a premium for Super Bowl spots to reach a unified audience.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Super Bowl ads cost an average of $8 million per 30-second unit, but a handful of spots sold for $10 million-plus, a record, said Peter Lazarus, who leads advertising and partnerships for NBC Sports. He said he was calling February, with the Super Bowl,\u00a0Olympics\u00a0and the\u00a0NBA All-Star Game, \u201clegendary February.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Super #Bowl #ads #silliness #tears #nostalgia #Americans #reel #collective #trauma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At a\u00a0difficult time\u00a0for Americ… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[3134,3800,356,11628,12271,11136,7404,12269,1815,12270,12272],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}