
S5 · E5
12 Feb 2026 · 43 min
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.
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