From Football to Commercial Breaks, Here Are the Ads Resonating During the NFL Season
With the NFL season in full swing, brands are stepping onto the field with creative ads that connect their products to the game and sometimes bring in familiar faces to do the heavy lifting. Since the start of pre-season, System1 has been tracking all the ads airing to see which are scoring big with consumers.
Our Test Your Ad platform measures emotional response throughout each ad, assigning a predictive score from 1.0 to 5.9 Stars based on long-term brand-building potential. Ads that spark strong, positive emotions like happiness and surprise tend to score higher. Only 1% of ads earn a coveted 5-Star rating.
The Top 5 NFL Ads (Ranked by Star Rating)
1. Applebee’s “Score Big 2 for $25 w/ CJ Stroud” – 4.9 Stars
2. Little Caesar’s “Thumbs feat. George Kittle” – 4.5 Stars
3. Popeye’s “Taste the Better Wings w/ Baker Mayfield” – 4.2 Stars
4. Pepsi “Tailgate Crashers” – 4.2 Stars
5. Jersey Mike’s “New Spokesperson” – 4.1 Stars
Let’s break down what these winning ads have in common. And if you’d like to see the Test Your Ad results for even more ads, contact our team for a demo of our database of more than 150,000 ads
NFL Personalities Used the Right Way
Celebrity cameos are a tried-and-true tactic, especially around the Super Bowl. In fact, Super Bowl LIX saw a 13% increase in celebrity appearances compared to Super Bowl LVIII. But not all star power is created equal. The most effective ads either flip expectations or lean into what makes their stars iconic.
The top performers this season nail that balance. Baker Mayfield treats Popeyes wings like a game-winning strategy to become “Better Mayfield.” Pepsi’s Tailgate Crashers features Josh Allen and Justin Jefferson crashing Sunday tailgates to make sure Pepsi is part of the lineup. Jefferson even jokes, “We usually work on Sundays,” adding a clever nod to their real-life schedules. The players make it their mission off the field to upgrade tailgates with Pepsi, because everything tastes better with it.
Game-Day Food as the Play
Food and football go hand in hand, and brands are leaning into that connection. Uber Eats’ “Football is for Food” spot with Bradley Cooper landed at number six with a strong 4.0 Star Rating. The ad, created by Special US, is packed with food puns from turnovers to a conspiracy theory that the Eagles only won the Super Bowl to sell wings. Cooper, a longtime Eagles fan, is a natural fit for the campaign, which continues the food conspiracy theme the brand featured last season and during Super Bowl LIX.
Jersey Mike’s also plays into this theme while blending humor and celebrity. Their ad humorously replaces their longstanding spokesperson, Danny Devito, with Eli Manning, a better fit for football season. It’s a clever combination of two winning strategies: using NFL personalities effectively and tying the product to game-day food culture.
Humor That Hits the End Zone
Football is a communal experience. People are watching live, eating, shouting, and laughing, so your ad’s humor needs to be broad, bold, and easy to catch. Subtle jokes often get lost in the noise.
Little Caesar’s nails this with George Kittle riding in on a deer. It’s absurd, but it works. The deer can’t eat pizza (or play football for that matter) without its thumbs. The joke lands hard and sticks. Since then, the “deal deer” has made another appearance with Saquon Barkley, proving that when a joke scores, it’s worth running it back.
Loving the Football Ad Coverage?
We’ll be tracking ads all season long and, as always, gearing up for the Super Bowl. Expect a full breakdown of how advertisers perform leading up to the Big Game, plus our Super Bowl ad roundup launching after Super Bowl Sunday.
System1’s Test Your Ad database has more than 150,000 ads, featuring rankings and downloadable reports detailing creative’s commercial potential based on consumers’ emotional responses.
