“The correlation between happiness and long-term success is very, very high,” Evans said. “Ideally, shock people to get their attention but leave them feeling happy at the end.”
Meet their expectations
Brands have begun using the Super Bowl as a moment to start a new campaign, but System1’s data would caution against that. “People really want something that is instantly recognizable,” Evans noted.
Brands that lean into familiar assets, such as Budweiser’s Clydesdales, score on average a full point higher on System1’s scale than ads with celebrities in them. But that doesn’t mean companies that haven’t spent 150 years building their brand are out of luck. Distinctive assets could be a recurring setting, a sound effect, or even a color (Brat summer, anyone?) Or you can always borrow someone else’s cultural clout with a hit song or pop culture nostalgia.
“Rather than familiarity breeding contempt,” Evans said, “what we find is familiarity breeds contentment.
System1’s Top 10 Super Bowl Ads (2020-2025)
1. Lay’s | “Little Farmer” (2025)
2. NFL | “Somebody I It Takes All of Us” (2025)
3. Huggies | “Welcome to the World, Baby” (2021)
4. Disney | “Disney100 Special Look” (2023)
5. Jeep | “Groundhog Day” (2020)
6. WeatherTech | “Whatever Comes Your Way” (2025)
7. Doritos | “Cool Ranch” (2020)
8. Samuel Adams | “Boston Dynamics” (2022)
9. Doritos | “Push It” (2022)
10. NFL | “Flag 50” (2025)
