This year’s Super Bowl ads will feature the usual products, beer, food, and betting, but a new contender is joining the list—Jesus.
Key Details
- The regular mainstays are joining the lineup again for this year’s Super Bowl, including the top beer and food brands, but a new faith-based ad campaign will run called “He Gets Us.”
- The “He Gets Us” ad campaign is from a nonprofit organization of the same name and targets people who are spiritually open but skeptical of Christianity because they may view it as hypocritical, discriminatory, or judgmental, according to Haven ad-agency president Jason Vanderground.
- Television advertising has been a sellout for this year’s game, and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch says the company expects to gross $600 million in ad revenue from its Super Bowl coverage.
Why it’s news
The time is quickly approaching for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs to face off in Super Bowl LVII.
An estimated 192.9 million people will tune in for the championship game—and many of those people are just as excited to see this year’s commercial lineup as they are to watch the players.
Fox says the company ran out of advertising space for the game, and many companies paid top dollar for a spot with 30-second commercials costing between $6 million to $7 million.
The ad lineup looks similar to previous years, with many commercials about beer, betting, and food. The alcohol market is a newly competitive ad space this year as Anheuser-Busch InBev gave up its exclusive rights to promote the category in the game—opening the door to other providers.
Many ads have been promoted, including all the major beer brands, sports betting games, and food and drink brands, but a new one has stepped up this year—faith-based ads.
The “He Gets Us” ad campaign was introduced last year but is running a 90-second ad this year to reintroduce the large Super Bowl audience to Jesus. The ad cost the non-profit around $20 million to run on Super Bowl Sunday.
“What we’re trying to do is put the world’s biggest influencer on TV’s biggest stage,” says Vanderground, whose Haven produced the campaign.
The ad isn’t stopping at the Super Bowl it is also running on social media with other advertisements elsewhere. The organization is showing messages that say, “Jesus let his hair down, too,” to show that Jesus took part in celebrations just as people do today.