Welcome to the 2025 Super Bowl Ad Awards For The Non-Poetic! Super Bowl LIX is history and the Eagles are decisive Super Bowl champions! And it’s time to reveal our judging panel’s (me) top honors for this year’s Super Bowl ads.
Everyone has their opinions of the best and worst, funniest and failures, award winners and money wasters, noteworthy and not worthy. But our Super Bowl Ad Awards may stray wildly from the standard accolades for Super Bowl ads. Our goal is to recognize the Super Bowl ads that stuck and the ones that sucked. That means highlighting the ads that resonated with the person who watched the game first, the commercials second and had a beer or two (from the viewpoint of an advertising guy who worked Super Bowl promotions in bars for 15 years). So, without further non-poetry…
Best Ad That Screams “We Have No New Ideas” Award
Co-opting a catchphrase from a 25-year old movie for your Super Bowl ad concept? Check!
Using a cheap, attention-getting stunt to generate “buzz” before the Super Bowl? Affirmative!
Congratulations Coors Light for hitting the “We’re Creatively Bankrupt” daily double! Like actual Coors Light, their “Got A Case of the Mondays” spot featuring sloths having a bad day was empty and flavorless. A line from the funny movie Office Space, Coors Light adapted “Case of the Mondays” into an unfunny concept for their Super Bowl spot. But Coors Light doubled down on their bad idea with pre-game ads with an intentional misspelling to generate cheap buzz. (Pro tip: If you have to explain your concept and stunt before the ad runs, you’re doing it wrong.) Honestly, a silver bullet should have been used to kill this idea before it ever came to life.
The “Please, Just Go Away!” Ad Award
Uber Eats gave us a celebrity-studded spot on the history of football … or something. But piled atop a full season of Matthew McConaughey playing a middle-aged Wooderson for Uber Eats, this ad was not alright, alright, alright! Too many celebrity cameos, too many contrived scenarios for all those celebrities and too many concepts jammed into one spot. But, ultimately, this spot earned its award for the use of not one but two of the most overexposed pitchmen of our time; McConaughey and Peyton Manning. That McConaughey also appeared in not one, but two, SalesForce ads (and I’m still not sure what the hell SalesForce does) didn’t help. Please advertisers, there are pitchmen who can do the same thing McConaughey and Manning are doing for your brand who would work for less. And they’d be far less annoying and overexposed.
Honorable Mention: Jesus, He Gets Us
As a concept, the He Gets Us message is tired and hasn’t evolved. And while it’s still trying to be a show-stopper, the message really falls flat on Super Bowl Sunday. The spot asked us to ponder, “What is Greatness?” Even with Johnny Cash singing Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus, this spot was not “greatness.”
Best “Close But No Cigar” Super Bowl Ad Award
The Ram Trucks spot featuring Glen Powell as Goldilocks could have been a classic among Super Bowl ads. A celebrity in an absurd situation can always play when it sells the product. Instead, Dodge overplayed their hand and overproduced the ad. Instead of cutting through the noise, there was too much screaming, too many booms and it was ultimately more noise. In the end, it was a :60 spot that would have had more impact as a :30.
Best Ad That Put Everyone To Sleep Award
Jeep has a long history of room-quieting Super Bowl ads featuring big-name celebrities waxing poetically about freedom and America. Those ads can work in the right time and place. This year, however, Jeep chose to have Harrison Ford present a monotonous, ponderous, two minute monologue on freedom, acceptance and America in the 4th quarter of a blowout game. Though many viewers likely were still paying attention at that point, I’d bet that spot didn’t hold their attention for the full two minutes. Even the novelty of Harrison Ford as spokesperson had worn off by the cute payoff at the end. And, for all the mention of freedom and America, did anyone bother to notice the irony that Jeep is owned by Netherlands-based Stellantis?
The Office Dog Honors Memorial Award
Named in memory of my beloved Office Dog (he was the goodest of boys!), this award honors the best use of animals (preferably monkeys) in a Super Bowl ad. But, it seems monkeys are passé in Super Bowl ads these days and dogs were a rare commodity too. Other than sloths and NerdWallet’s talking manatee, animals were scant in this year’s ads. So, this award goes to the plucky young Budweiser Clydesdale that was too young to join the team but bravely pushes a dropped keg to a bar. However, while it likely made everyone say “Awwwww,” it will have zero impact on Budweiser’s flat sales.
The Super Bowl Ad WTF? Award
Streaming service Tubi gave us a weird concept about a kid born with a skin cowboy hat. or was he born with a cowboy hat-shaped head? Whatever it was, the kid (and later the adult) liked Westerns and therefore Tubi was the streaming service for him. Or something. I think the spot ran twice and it was still too weird for the concept to make sense.
Best Ad That Didn’t Make Fetch Happen Award
Easy Mean Girls reference aside, Fetch is an app, or something. And they pulled a cheap stunt with a million dollar giveaway in $10,000 just for downloading and opening the app. I still don’t know what the app does and I didn’t scan the QR code that was on the screen for the duration of the app. Throw in that this ad ran at the 2-minute warning break in the 4th quarter of a blowout game and this was a big waste of time and money. And for the people that did see it, it was quickly forgotten among a sea of better – and earlier – Super Bowl ads. (Note the ad linked above is a “making of” video, since it appears the spot itself isn’t online.)
The Super Bowl Ad Awards For The Non-Poetic Water Cooler Winner
This year, I found the Super Bowl ads awash in mediocrity. But from that morass of mediocrity, two stood above the rest. In fact, these were the two that I actually did want to go back and watch again.
The Doritos ad did everything a Super Bowl ad should do. It was fun, engaging, cut through the noise and had a nice payoff. My only issue was it ran in the 1st quarter, which it might get lost among the other attempts at Super Bowl ad blockbusters.
The other ad I thought was great was the Stella Artois Two David’s ad. Here, David Beckham discovers he has a long-lost brother, also named David. Having Matt Damon as the other David, along with some witty dialogue made this spot, fun, memorable, and effective Even though it came late in the 4th quarter, this ad was good enough that the people who actually saw it took note and will be talking about it tomorrow.
So, there ya’ go… my Super Bowl Ad Awards for 2025. Some good, some bad, some creative, some cliché. Feel free to leave your thoughts, picks, pans, favorites, and failures in the comments. And, until then, when does the 2025 football season start?