5 Game-Changing Creative Tips for Your 100-Yard Super Bowl Countdown

Navigating the Football Field(work)

For those new to the System1 Super Bowl, fear not—we’ve broken down our long-term commercial impact measure (Star Rating) into NFL terminology to help you get in the game-day spirit. And for returning readers, feel free to skip ahead to the insights… or stick around to watch a Brit try to make sense of it all!

Since 2020, a dedicated team of System1 experts has been leveraging our Test Your Ad platform on game day to harness the predictive power of emotion from real consumers. We analyze how effective big-budget Super Bowl ads will be in the market, focusing on both long-term commercial effectiveness (Star Rating) and short-term activation potential (Spike Rating). So, stay with me!

The Star Rating measures the overall emotional response after watching an ad. It takes into account seven core human emotions—happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, and contempt—as well as neutrality. The more positive feelings (particularly happiness and surprise) audiences experience at the end, the higher the Star Rating, or in NFL terms, the closer you get to a touchdown.

While negative emotions and neutrality lower the Star Rating, not all negative emotions are detrimental. As we’ve learned from The Extraordinary Cost of Dull, the real enemy in advertising is neutrality—if consumers don’t feel anything, they won’t act or make a purchase. Negative emotions can still play a role, especially in the short term. The more emotionally intense an ad is, the more likely it is to prompt immediate action, which is why this intensity contributes to our short-term metric, the Spike Rating.

Overview of the System1 Scoring System

5.0-Star Rating / Exceptional Spike Rating = Touchdown

4.0– Star Rating / Strong Spike Rating = Field Goal

3.0– Star Rating / Good Spike Rating = Safety

For this piece, we’re focusing on the brands that outperformed last year’s 2.7-Star average—those that achieved a 3.0-Star Rating or higher. This isn’t to say that campaigns scoring below this threshold were ineffective; rather, we aim to spotlight the best of last year’s top 10 to help you reach touchdown status and break into the elite 5-Star territory—the top 1% of all ads in System1’s database. Like you, we’re aiming for the end zone.

The best part? When brands prioritize long-term Star Ratings, short-term success often follows. In fact, our study of 41,000 US ads tested with 6 million nationally representative consumers found that 92.1% of total 4- and 5-Star ads also achieve above-average Spike Ratings. Think of it like American football: the closer you get to a touchdown, the greater the intensity of the crowd! So, without further ado, let’s dive into the top 5 strategic insights from 2024.

5 Strategic Creative Positions for LIX

#5 Keep within the Goalposts

Year after year, the Super Bowl tempts brands to go big, bold, and all out with their ads—think massive budgets, shiny new concepts, and, more often than not, a celebrity cameo (or three). While celebrities can certainly add major appeal (and sometimes deliver impressive ROI), it’s essential to remember that it’s your brand that should steal the spotlight, not just their name. Many Super Bowl campaigns stray too far from core brand ‘goalposts,’ sacrificing the hard work done throughout the year to embed distinctive brand cues for the sake of a shiny celebrity and a completely new creative concept.

When planning your Super Bowl campaign, consider what viewers will remember: was it “an awesome ad for your brand featuring that celeb,” or simply “the ad with that celeb”? You want it to be the former. Celebrities should share the spotlight, not overshadow it. Lean into the creative strategy you’ve invested in all year, sticking with your distinctive brand elements—be it a beloved character, iconic jingle, or unique visual style.

Our recent research with the IPA, titled “Compound Creativity,” shows that consistency pays off in the long run. So treat the Super Bowl as you would any major marketing moment—a chance to get your brand singing loud and clear.

A fantastic example from last year’s Super Bowl is Oreo’s “It All Starts with a Twist,” which achieved an impressive 99% brand recognition—outperforming all other 2023 campaigns. Despite featuring the world’s most famous “momager,” Kris Jenner, there’s no mistaking who the ad is for: Oreo. The Mondelez team nailed this by centering the campaign’s creative identity around Oreo’s unique ritual—the twist to open. This iconic gesture, along with Oreo’s distinctive shape and color palette showcased right from the opening scene, reinforces the brand’s identity in an instantly recognizable and unforgettable way. By embedding these familiar cues throughout, consumers don’t have to keep up with the Kardashians; Oreo is already top of mind.

Star Rating: 4.1

#4 Hail Mary, Hail Humor

Much like a Hail Mary pass, humor is often seen as a high-risk move in advertising. Many brands shy away from it entirely because they’re unsure how to execute it effectively. However, just like in football, a Hail Mary can yield significant rewards if done right. Orlando Wood’s research in Lemon and Look out highlights that humor is one of the most effective tools in advertising, second only to cute animals. Unfortunately, comedic levels in U.S. advertising have dropped sharply in recent years. The good news? The value of humor is making a comeback, as evidenced by the Cannes Lions introducing a dedicated humor category this year. Even so, we’re still a long way from the comedic levels of years past.

For brands gearing up for the Super Bowl, this creates a tremendous opportunity: with fewer brands embracing humor, those that do can truly stand out. Hellman’s executed this strategy brilliantly last year with their playful “Mayo Cat” campaign featuring Kate McKinnon. This campaign skillfully employed various comedic devices, including clever wordplay, inversion (showing animals behaving like humans), and, of course, exaggeration, all brought to life by Kate’s hilariously over-the-top persona.

What’s particularly clever about this campaign is how it keeps Hellman’s mayonnaise front and center in the narrative, reinforcing strategy #5. After watching, the cat’s purr-fect meow is unforgettable, with Hellman’s cues embedded throughout, ensuring the brand sticks in viewers’ minds as much as the laughs do.

Star Rating: 4.5

#3 A Simple Strategy is an Effective Strategy  

Amid all the extravagance and sparkle of the Super Bowl, you don’t need out-of-this-world, innovative concepts to make a memorable impression. In fact, last year’s top-performing campaign was the simplest of all, leveraging core elements that drive great advertising and long-term success—what Orlando Wood calls “right-brained” features in his books Lemon and Look out. These elements engage the right side of our brain, which handles broad-beam attention, and include melody, a strong sense of place, characters with agency, a narrative arc, and visual depth. These fundamentals often outperform novelty concepts because they resonate on a human level, drawing viewers into the story, the characters and the world created by the brand.

Set on a beautiful beach (sense of place), to the (melodic) soundtrack of “Quando, Quando, Quando”, featuring celebrities (with agency), Michelob Ultra ticked all the right boxes of an engaging and resonant campaign with “Superior Beach” and earned themselves the title of Super Bowl champion in 2024. This modest and peaceful ad keeps Michelob Ultra at the core of the story, while allowing the narrative and characters to do the talking.

Star Rating: 4.8

#2 Not All Players are Designed the Same

Much like NFL players, who need various traits to excel on the field, brands and categories operate similarly. For instance, the B2B, pharma, and healthcare sectors often perform below the U.S. advertising norm throughout the year. For these brands, a touchdown might look more like a 3- or 4-Star Rating rather than a perfect 5-Star. This doesn’t mean a 5-Star Rating is unattainable; it simply indicates that the baseline for success is lower.

A couple of examples of brands that excelled despite their category averages are Pfizer and E*Trade, both landing well within the 3-Star range compared to a category average of just 1 Star. While the products they sell may not be as inherently appealing as a creamy Oreo or a refreshing beer, both brands have shown that by tapping into consistency, fundamental advertising principles, distinctive assets, and a touch of humor, the Super Bowl trophy can certainly be within reach for everyone.

Star Rating: 3.8

#1 Fluent Devices are the Quarterback of Super Bowl Advertising

At #1, we have arguably, much like the Quarterback, the most important strategy for brands wishing to score a touchdown: the fluent device. In his books Lemon and Look out, Orlando Wood identified that fluent devices, or ‘brand characters’ are not only significant drivers of brand recognition when used consistently over time, but they are also incredibly emotive, therefore driving long lasting commercial impact. They do what some might say “kill two birds with one stone” and are one of the most effective features in advertising. Some examples include the Cheetos cheetah, the E*trade babies, the Budweiser Clydesdales and of course, one of the most recognizable, the M&M’s, who made their iconic return at the Super Bowl in 2023.

Fluent devices can be resonant for a range of reasons, like tapping into nostalgia, facilitating humor or setting a brand apart from the category – and the best part of all, they don’t need to make sense – take the Geico Gecko for example, it has nothing to do with insurance, but has enabled Geico to stand out and be distinctive within an otherwise emotionless category. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the fluent device in action, with Budweiser’s “Old School Delivery”, which not only topped the charts at the Super Bowl last year, but is also one of the most emotionally engaging beer ads on our premium database.

Star Rating: 4.2

Create with Confidence

Catch last year’s Super Bowl recap and download our “How to Win the Super Bowl” report, featuring 5 years of advertising effectiveness data.