In light of Super Bowl LX on Monday morning (AEST), System1 has released the American Football Big Game ‘Hall of Fame,’ a ranking of consumers’ favourite Big Game ads of the 2020s, based on emotional response data for 425 ads from more than 60,000 people.
The Super Bowl offers advertisers an unrivalled, captivated audience of millions of viewers, creating a unique, shared cultural moment where creativity is showed off within commercials.
With record-high viewership, brands pay millions for 30-second spots to achieve massive, instant brand awareness, often leveraging celebrity-driven, high-production content that drives significant, long-term impact. It could be described as the advertisers own Super Bowl.
System1 also reveals key themes from top performers like Doritos, Jeep and the NFL, unlocking creative effectiveness insights for brands that want to win on advertising’s biggest stage.
Using its Test Your Ad Competitive Edge platform, System1 tests every Big Game ad with consumers. The testing predicts long-term growth potential (Star Rating) and short-term sales potential (Spike Rating) based on how people feel when watching the creative, how intense these emotions are and how quickly and well the brand is correctly identified by viewers.
In 2025, Big Game ads averaged 3.0 Stars out of a maximum 5.9 Stars, slightly higher than the 2.3-Star average for all U.S. advertising. The average for the top-performing Big Game ads from the past six years far exceeds these metrics, securing 5.2 Stars or ‘Exceptional’ long-term growth potential. They accomplish this by leaning into storytelling, humour, cultural references and more.
America’s Favourite Ads
The top Big Game ads of the 2020s are ranked according to Star Rating (predicted long-term growth potential), with Spike Rating (predicted short-term sales potential) as the tie-breaker for ads with the same Star Rating.
Lay’s, ‘Little Farmer’ (2025) — 5.9 Stars
NFL, ‘Somebody I It Takes All of Us’ (2025) — 5.6 Stars
Huggies, ‘Welcome to the World, Baby’ (2021) — 5.4 Stars
Disney, ‘Disney100 Special Look’ (2023) — 5.3 Stars
Jeep, ‘Groundhog Day’ (2020) — 5.2 Stars
WeatherTech, ‘Whatever Comes Your Way’ (2025) — 5.2 Stars
Doritos, ‘Cool Ranch’ (2020) — 5.1 Stars
Samuel Adams, ‘Boston Dynamics’ (2022) — 4.9 Stars
Doritos, ‘Push It’ (2022) — 4.9 Stars
NFL, ‘Flag 50’ (2025) — 4.9 Stars
The Effectiveness Playbook
The top-performing ads showcased the best practices for driving emotional engagement, attention and distinctiveness, which support commercial impact.
Tell a Story: A narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end, characters who interact with one another and emotional peaks and valleys are effectiveness gold. Whether it’s Lay’s story of a young girl growing her very own potato to Jeep’s reimagining of Groundhog Day or Samuel Adams’ after-hours party with the Boston Dynamics robots, there are many ways for advertisers to tell a story that puts their brand at the centre of it. Ads can introduce moments of tension or sadness, so long as they are resolved and replaced with positive emotion by the end.
Make Your Audience Laugh: Amusement is one of the most powerful types of happiness, so making people laugh goes a long way for effectiveness. WeatherTech flipped the script by putting daredevil grannies in the driver’s seat and Doritos also delivered laughs by showing jungle animals singing and dancing. Don’t be afraid to push boundaries through over-the-top, slapstick humour that surprises and delights.
Leverage Distinctive Assets: In 2025, average brand recall across Big Game ads was 79 per cent, meaning one in five viewers couldn’t confidently tell you which brand an ad was for. Remember that familiarity breeds contentment. Disney leans into its recognisable IP for its ad celebrating 100 years while Samuel Adams continually features its fluent device ‘Your Cousin from Boston.’ Make your brand known, whether it’s through recurring celebrities or characters like Cousin or the Budweiser Clydesdales, a sonic device or jingle, or easy-to-distinguish brand colours and fonts. This ensures you make the most of your high-performing creative.
A Celebrity Isn’t a Requirement: Many of consumers’ favourite Big Game ads lack one of the most commonly used creative routes: celebrities. While celebrities can entertain, they work best when they’re consistently used over the long term, like T. Mobile’s dynamic duo of Zach Braff and Donald Faison. More often than not, strong narratives that elicit intense, positive emotions win over flashy celebrity appearances that can distract from the brand and message.
Consider (Relevant) Cultural References: Widely known cultural references deliver nostalgia for this mass audience event, which drives positive feeling. The NFL’s ‘Flag 50’ spot drew upon Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Jeep brought Bill Murray back for a Groundhog Day redo and Doritos’ ‘Cool Ranch’ capitalised on the popularity of Lil Nas X’s chart-topping hit Old Town Road. Each made sure the cultural references aligned with their brand: high school served as the backdrop to a flag football match for the NFL; Bill Murray (happily) relived the same day again and again, driving in his Jeep; and Doritos’ ranch-flavoured crisps got a western-inspired spot complete with the wildly popular country rapper.
“The Big Game often brings some of the year’s most entertaining, funny and memorable creative. Brands that apply the learnings around storytelling, humour, distinctive assets and cultural references will not only have an ad deserving of the ‘Hall of Fame’ but one that can support sales and profit gain in the months and years following game night,” said Jon Evans, chief customer officer at System1 and host of the Uncensored CMO podcast.
The host of the Uncensored CMO will headline at Cairns Crocodiles 2026!
