The Super Bowl LX was played on February 9 (NZT) between the Seahawks and the Patriots. As there is every year, a string of new adverts are released just for the occasion. Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand chief creative officer Steve Cochran is back for another year to review the 2026 ads and to share the ones that made his top nine.
Is a Spew Review a good idea for a Super Bowl opinion piece? Well, I’m betting it’ll get your attention, so, so far so good.
Deciding what is or isn’t a good idea is the big call that all the people behind this year’s lineup of Super Bowl ads had to make some months ago. How successful their decision was is a matter of taste and opinion. And certainly, as someone who’s written ads for over 30 years my own opinion is very coloured. Coloured with shades of green, that is.
Yes, jealousy. Because I’ve never had the opportunity to make a Super Bowl ad, or had their eye-watering budgets, or their 100 million plus audience – or for that matter, had the attention of the world’s marketing industry captured in a single moment. That’s why I’m always a little sick with envy every Super Bowl season. And why you’re reading my Spew Review.
However, I haven’t let my jealously blind me to why these nine ads rose to the top of this year’s smorgasbord of commercials. My criterion for reviewing is very well considered: Is it attention-getting? Is it entertaining or interesting enough to reward the audience for their attention? Is the story and/or use of celebrities relevant to the brand, their audience or the context of Super Bowl? And is it well-made and crafted?
Yes, I have employed full professional objectivity in rating these ads on a scale of one to five Spews (five Spews being a good thing).
Claude
This is actually a campaign of ads – about not having ads – but each ad in the series is as good as the next ad. Rarely do we get such a strong and distinctive point of difference to advertise as these ads have, let alone a client willing to take a blatant shot at the competition.
So, the brief makes me jealous for starters, but these guys nailed it with their deadpan satirical approach. One that even provoked a public response from Sam Altman of OpenAI. Humour that’s gagging for four and a half Spews.
Hellmann’s Best Foods Mayonnaise
This spot is so ridiculous in such a great way that it hurled itself into my top 12 the moment I watched it. A Neil Diamond want-to-be weirdo trapped in a deli, singing “Sweet Sandwich Time” to the tune of Sweet Caroline is pure entertainment. Top this with him squeezing mayo atop of customers’ sandwiches, and it’s an ad that some might consider cheesy, cringy, or just plain stupid. It’s all of the above and I wish I wrote it. Three mayo filled Spews.
Instakart
This ad got a lot of attention in my feed. Perhaps Ben Stiller had a bit to do with that. It gets points for dramatising a small brand proof-point in a big way – that being the ability to select the ripeness of your bananas on their app. The idea to have Stiller trying to do flips as good as Benson Boone while singing about bananas, is bananas. But that felt a bit too tenuous for my liking, though still in my top nine. That they got Spike Jonze to direct it did induce One Spew though.
Uber Eats
Uber Eats was my favourite pick last year. And Mathew MacConaughey is back again, still trying to convince everyone, including Bradly Cooper, that Super Bowl is a conspiracy to sell food. Points for consistency. They’ve added a layer where you can order your own special edited version of the commercial on the Uber app – that’s the kind of idea a client often says “too hard” to. I think this campaign has got stronger, so this year I’m greener than a distinctive brand asset. Five Spews in an Uber Eats bag.
Squarespace
“Get it before you lose it.” Now that’s a good line for a domain name campaign. And they used it well with a beautifully crafted execution using Emma Stone as a deranged version of herself. 12 days of set building apparently, and it shows, in the black and white artful film.
A complementary PSA style spot with Emma talking directly to camera is an interesting campaign dynamic too. This gets Four Spews from me.
Comcast Xinity
“I know, what if we used a scene from Jurassic Park, but instead of everything turning to shit, we get the original actors back, make them appear as young as they were in the original and shoot a whole new happy outcome instead – thanks to them having Xfinity Wi-fi. And maybe we get Taika to direct it.”
Budget jealously gets this ad Two Spews.
Pepsi
There’s been lots of discussion online about the strategy of using Coke’s brand assets – the polar bears -in this Pepsi ad. The suspicion is that Pepsi is giving oxygen to their competitor, and many a Super Bowl fan will just see it as a Coke ad. They might be right.
But to go there, reigniting this long rivalry by telling the story of the Coke mascot who has an existential crisis after choosing the ‘wrong’ brand in a blind taste test, makes me smile enough to love them for it. Two Big Spews.
Amazon Alexa
Amazon truly leaned into the suspicion that AI is coming for us with this spot that has Chris Hemsworth convinced Alexa could kill him. With plenty of money to pull off some big physical stunts, this ad turns a dark premise into a good time. There were heaps of reasons why a client wouldn’t have bought this script. But they did. Maybe because the agency is the client. But advertising that embraces a tension like this this does, make for memorable stuff. Enough for Two Spews.
Rocket Mortgage
What the hey? This spot isn’t funny in the slightest. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. How did a touching emotional spot end up here? I bet this ad hit a chord in America. Set against a song from a 70’s children’s TV show being evocatively sung by Lady Gaga, it carries a poignant message about the need for good neighbours. Culturally relevant but also totally relevant to the brand and product. Boom. Or should I say barf. It moved me to Five Spews.
So that’s nine of the best spots that made me a tad envious this year. Of course, there’ll be armchair critics who will slam some of my choices as rubbish. But I reckon any creative who gets to play in Super Bowl is a winner. Perhaps one day even I’ll get to write one of those wonderfully stupid big game ads, instead of just writing a stupid review of them. Guess at least this review got you to read to here. See, I knew Spew Review was a good idea.
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