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I had too many buffalo wings yesterday. It’s an issue, since a flying elbow broke my orbital bone in two places last week and I can’t play basketball for a month… not that it’ll stop me from grabbing leftover wings for breakfast this morning.

But hey, let’s talk about the Super Bowl ads! We’ll cover

• Who had the best overall ad?

• How OpenAI lit their money on fire

• Which spot got the tears out of me?

—Jack Appleby

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Okay, we dropped our ad, now let’s talk about ads.

My Overall Favorite: Lilo & Stitch

Man, this came out of nowhere! You never expected contextual advertising right before kick-off, and we all looked up when they yelled “Sorry folks, there’s something down on the field.” Sheer delight hit our faces when we realized it was Stitch running around!

Really loved this so much, especially how it kept escalating (we cackled when he crashed the cart). Disney set the goalposts high and while a few brands came close, they kept their lead as my favorite all night.

The Laugh Out Louders was a close race

A huge % of brands go for humor with their Super Bowl ads, ranging from the unhinged & absurd to the sharp chuckle at a surprise. Four seemed to stand above the rest:

• Reese’s Don’t Eat Lava

• Totino’s RIP Chazmo

• Liquid Death’s Drinkin’ On The Job

• Doritos’ Induction

I genuinely loved all four of them. I burst out laughing at all four! But for me, Reese’s squeaks out the win because it’s not just hysterical, but it ties their product to the humor better than any ad in the whole game. They’re selling chocolate lava cups, so they made an ad about real lava while constantly talking about the product. That’s what advertising is supposed to do! Entertain and delight while also selling.

The Tearjerker: Google Pixel’s “Dream Job”

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Google’s forever one of the best-in-class for Super Bowl marketing. They don’t just make your eyes rain, but they find creative ways to show how their product integrates with those big emotional moments. I give them the edge of Pfizer’s Mama Said Knock You Out in the Tearjerker category.

OpenAI could’ve taken a page out of Google’s playbook, too…

Good, but they’ve done better: Nike & Dove

Don’t get me wrong, I got hyped when I heard that Zeppelin “Whole Lotta Love” riff behind JuJu and Caitlin! And Nike copywriting is forever fantastic—I loved the “so win” line. And I loveeee how women’s basketball has finally caught the eyeballs they deserve. I just think it’s a B+ for a brand that usually gets As. Didn’t love the black and white approach for an ad about standing out, didn’t think it highlighted the badassery of the women as much as it could.

Dove had the same issue for me. Watching that little girl run with a cover of “Born To Run” hit my heart early… but the spot just didn’t progress or give us as much emotion as the other Super Bowl spots. Dove loves using the on-screen text to show a jaw-dropping statistic, but there wasn’t enough pay off.

Biggest Miss: Cirkul

First-time Super Bowl advertisers make first-timer mistakes. That’s doubly true when you decide to use your in-house marketing team instead of an ad agency who specializes in Super Bowl campaigns.

The Cirkul ad got star talent… but it… wasn’t funny. And the entire script’s purpose was to promote a giveaway… but it was a giveaway that already happened? I honestly spent 15 minutes googling how their giveaway worked and still couldn’t figure it out… but it turned out they’d given away 100,000 Cirkul bottles… to random addresses? Literally?

It’s just kinda bad in every way, especially when you realize no one knows what a Cirkul is. It also goes to show companies are good and bad at different types of marketing—they’ve had some of the smartest plugs in Mr. Beast videos, but totally blundered their Super Bowl moment.

That hysterical ad where you’ll never remember which brand made the ad: The Sloths

I was crying laughing when the sloths struggled to get through the day. They’re sloths! Who doesn’t like a sloth.

But mannn, the brand tie-in was weak. Turns out the sloths were slow… because they had a case of the Mondays… and Coors Light is the solve to the case of the Mondays. That’s a long walk for a ham sandwich.

Coors Light has been all misses for me lately. They tried a fake typo thing a few weeks ago, too, which just didn’t land at all and was absolutely a planted typo (they pitched me the story at one point).

Most Bizarre in a good way: Seal as Seal in Mountain Dew

Yes, like you, I’ve walked around my apartment singing BABYYYYY because Kiss From A Rose is stuck in my head.

Mountain Dew’s always the team weirdo in the best ways, and man, they topped it again. They got Seal to be a Seal and to customize his song to talk about limes. It’s super memorable and I can’t even imagine how many memes will come out of it.

Worst Luck: Pringles & Little Caesars

Ughhh. I feel so bad for both Little Caesars & Pringles. The ads are so, so similar by sheer accident. Check my video above for the explainer.

How to light $16 million on fire: ChatGPT

Artistically, I LOVE what ChatGPT did with their Super Bowl ad. It stood out so much against the constant celebrity runaround! It was stunning in their bit dot art style! And I think every brand could learn from visually zigging when others zag.

But man… they’re promoting ChatGPT, one of the coolest tech innovations ever. To not pay off what ChatGPT does or how ChatGPT works in a full :60 Super Bowl ad is insane. They could’ve even used this same concept with either VO or some on-screen text and gotten much, much more out of it. It’s art, it’s not an ad.

And don’t you dare throw Apple’s old Super Bowl ad at me as defense—it was a different time in the media and tech landscapes for about a million reasons.

The Perfect Ad: Hellmann’s When Harry Met Sally

When Harry Met Sally! With Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan back! What a fantastic nostalgic play.

Even better: you don’t actually need to know the scene to think it’s funny. Watching a woman orgasm at a deli will always turn eyeballs (both at the deli and your Super Bowl party).

Even better Pt 2: the brand seamlessly integrates into the ad! It’s very natural.

But what’s your favorite?

You can always reply to this email with your thoughts—I love chatting with ya!