The Big Smoke team breaks down the Super Bowl 2025 ads that won big, flopped hard, and made us question everything in between.
Yesterday, in between all the football, our Super Bowl happened at The Big Smoke. This year, brands swung from hyper-specific weirdness to AI-fueled emotional punches, all competing for the biggest prize: your attention. The surprise factor may be fading, but the creative landscape is still packed with cultural cues worth dissecting. Our team breaks down the hits, the misses, and the marketing moves that defined Super Bowl 2025.
Marylyn Sendah – Marketing Lead
AI’s Super Bowl Cameo
After the 2024 Super Bowl, where Despicable Me took a satirical jab at the limitations of AI imagery, I found myself wondering: would any brand be bold enough to flip the script and debut AI in this year’s Super Bowl ads?
It felt like the ultimate test, could AI move from the punchline to the main event? And what would that mean for the future of advertising? (Dramatic, I know – but it’s the Super Bowl. Drama is part of the deal.)
But instead of brands racing to showcase AI innovation, most stuck to their tried-and-true formulas, and one even found itself accused of outright campaigning against it.
We also saw AI giants Google Gemini and OpenAI take their battle for market share offline and onto advertising’s biggest stage.
While Google’s official Gemini ad made headlines for all the wrong reasons, their other Gemini ad – disguised as a Pixel spot – stole the show. The tearjerker, racking up 22 million views just three days before the Super Bowl, follows a dad reflecting on his biggest job (fatherhood) while prepping for a job interview – with a little help from Gemini Google Pixel. It’s classic Google: timely, emotionally charged & light on the product.
OpenAI’s ad was modern, abstract, and fun, with a strong message: “All progress has a starting point.” It was a nice ad, but it missed the brief on what makes a Super Bowl-worthy spot. No surprise, it landed softly post-game, pulling in just 1.3% of the views compared to Google’s Ad.
Coke served up a nice (albeit heavy-handed) ad set in a mom-and-pop shop, leaning hard into nostalgia, family, and the classic “AI will take over everything, and we’re doomed” trope. The ad drew a parallel between today’s AI fears and past anxieties over tech advances like computers, wrapping it all up with the reassuring tagline: “I think we’re going to be alright.”
While many have framed this as Coke “taking a shot” at AI, championing love, friendship, and small businesses as timeless constants (as long as you drink Coke), I saw it differently.
To me, it’s saying: Yes, AI will be everywhere, and we’re going to be alright – just like we’ve adapted to every other piece of tech.
This view was cemented for me as I reflected on the fact that Coke has dropped not one but two AI-generated ads in the past 12 months. It feels less like a critique of AI and more like a warm-up act for their inevitable Super Bowl AI debut.
In the race to define AI’s role in advertising, Gemini had a hit and a miss, Coke is setting the stage for its own AI debut, and OpenAI has learnt the lesson Coke and Google figured out long ago: it’s all about the story.
Dan Wheeldon – Head of Creative & Strategy
Hyper-Specific Weirdness for the Win
One of my main takeaways this year was that the surprise factor was almost non-existent.
Many of the big ads dropped days, weeks, or even months before the Super Bowl. Maybe that’s always been the case, but it does feel like the exclusivity, the big reveal, is fading. Everyone was sneaking a peek at their presents early.
It’s a broader trend.
Black Friday stretches across an entire month. Prime Day happens every other week. Christmas ads roll out well before Bublé and Mariah start their seasonal takeover.
I knew my favourite ad weeks before the game —Totino’s Pizza Rolls with Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson.
“Chazmo Finally Goes Home” dives into hyper-specific weirdness. A parody of E.T.’s farewell, but darker and unhinged – a thing of awkward beauty. While Mountain Dew went for straight surreal non-sequiturs (turning Seal into, well, a seal), Totino’s leaned into the comedy of discomfort—escalating from odd to deranged with two cult-hero comedians.
That was another notable theme this year – Celebrity pairings with existing chemistry. A range of nostalgia and now-stalgia.
I’m not overly fussed about sports, but the Super Bowl—and the madness around it—remains a cultural focal point for creativity and advertising. That said, the Super Bowl is not the only way to hit 100 million people anymore. Let’s see where production budgets go next year.
Adam Moore – Social Media Strategist
Not the Totino’s Ad (Thanks, Dan)
First of all, I just want to say that if I hadn’t procrastinated on this task, I would have picked the Totino’s Pizza Rolls ad first before Dan did.
I am the true Tim Robinson fan of The Big Smoke and it’s a shame that because of no fault but my own, I have to choose another ad, but here we go.
And just to delay my pick again briefly, I am also the resident head of the TBS Billy Crystal fan club and am currently approximately 65 millionth in queue for Sydney Sweeney’s hand in marriage. So yes, I also loved the Hellman’s ad.
So without further ado, even though I’d very much like to further ado this, my pick for my favourite Super Bowl ad is Bud Light!
Yes, THAT Bud Light. The same one that only a year ago Kid Rock was shooting up with machine guns because a trans woman did an ad for them. But we won’t get into my thoughts on Kid Rock et al here…
Budweiser has a long history of memorable Super Bowl ads, going 30 years back with the Budweiser frogs, and again in 1999 with one that I still reference on a daily basis when I greet literally anyone, “Wassssssup”.
This year’s ad won’t have the ongoing cultural effect that some of the previous ones did, but it was still very entertaining. Starring Shane Gillis, easily one of if not the funniest comedians around right now, and all around nice guy the immeasurably likeable Post Malone. Shane’s trademark effortless style of comedy is on full display here. The way he delivers any line is hilarious. I am also a fan of the absurdity of this ad, it’s silly and just a lot of fun from start to finish. Clocking in at only 60 seconds, I think this ad definitely has the most LPMs (laughs per minute) of any sport this year.
So in conclusion, my favourite Super Bowl ad of 2025 was Torino’s Pizza Rolls.
Derek Chung – Account Director
Predictable, But I Liked It
My favourite ad was the Hellmans Mayonnaise featuring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal
To be honest, it was formulaic and you know exactly what was going to happen, but the nostalgia factor hit home and it was well executed.
Nice little unexpected Sydney Sweeney cameo at the end as well
The most bizarre ad was Mountain Dew, starring Seal as a seal. That was some Cats: the movie level CGI, but that’s probably what they were going for to be honest
Lastly, my least favourite ad was Saquon for CURE Auto Insurance. I’m the exact target demographic (into football, cars) but it just didn’t land for me.
The Final Play
Super Bowl 2025 proved that whether it’s AI-driven sentiment, nostalgia-packed cameos, or ads that make you question reality (looking at you, Seal), great marketing still comes down to one thing: telling the right story at the right time. If your brand’s ready to create campaigns that stick (without needing a $7 million ad slot) let’s talk.