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System, Sizzle & Sales Impact of Super Bowl 2026 with CMO Nataly Kelly

S5 · E5

System, Sizzle & Sales Impact of Super Bowl 2026 with CMO Nataly Kelly

Nataly Kelly

12 Feb 2026 · 43 min

About this episode

Zappi CMO Nataly Kelly joins to talk about the Sizzle, Systems & Sales Impact of The Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is advertising’s biggest stage. $8 million for 30 seconds. Cultural noise at maximum volume. Celebrities everywhere. Music in almost every ad.

But once the spectacle fades, one question remains: which ads actually drove impact?

In this episode, we unpack the Zappi Super Bowl 2026 report (check it out here) built from testing every ad live with 20,000 American category buyers and benchmarking them against the top 100 performing TV ads in the US.

We explore:

– Why emotional response alone isn’t enough

– The role of purchase likelihood in predicting sales impact

– How celebrities can amplify an ad — or bury the brand

– Why distinctive brand assets (Budweiser’s Clydesdales, Nerds’ characters) still matter

– The Pepsi polar bear debate and what it says about brand memory

– How health brands like Wegovy, Hims & Hers and Ro cut through

– Why the best Super Bowl ads are part of a system, not a one-night stunt

This conversation goes beyond ranking ads. It looks at what actually moves the needle — and what marketers without Super Bowl budgets can learn from the world’s most expensive media moment. Zappi’s full report is available at zappi.io here.

Chapters

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chapters

  1. 2:25What Zappi Measures
  2. 4:07How the Super Bowl Ads Were Tested Live
  3. 5:00Celebrity Usage: Amplifier or Distraction?
  4. 8:54Brand Recall vs Entertainment
  5. 10:15Super Bowl Ads as Part of a System
  6. 12:38Music, Multi-Screening & Attention
  7. 13:54Health Brands, Outrage & Cultural Relevance
  8. 16:12Why Budweiser Still Wins with Distinctive Assets
  9. 18:34Pepsi, Polar Bears & the Coke Asset Debate
  10. 20:41System Over Sizzle: Campaign vs One Night
  11. 23:40The Emotional Power of Lays
  12. 24:35Nerds, Product Demonstration & Penetration
  13. 27:00What Marketers Without Super Bowl Budgets Should Learn
  14. 31:56Are Super Bowl Trends Changing?
  15. 36:50Favourite Ad
  16. 38:00Why Sales Impact Still Matters Most

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