Automakers Played it Safe and Smart at the 2026 Super Bowl
Rife with martial language, football and marketing are (albeit overused) metaphors for war. Each practitioner’s constant dilemma: attack or defend? Playing it safe can be a winning strategy, but it’s less fun to watch.
Still, consider the stakes.
At the time of writing, Nielsen (a leader in audience measurement) hadn’t announced whether 2026’s Super Bowl numbers outdid last year’s for America’s most-watched event of all time.
With numbers that high, 30 seconds of media placement this year cost more than $8 million.
It's no wonder that only three auto manufacturers aired commercials in 2026’s Super Bowl: Volkswagen, Toyota, and Cadillac. The others chose to stay home, not risking loss, just winning inattention.
An Insider Football Advertising Lesson
To maximize your creative’s effectiveness, advertising evangelist Luke Sullivan champions disguising your brand strategy in your concept, kind of like hiding a pill in the baloney you’d serve a sick dog. This year’s offerings didn’t hide the pill much.
While the work was beautiful and, in two of three cases, sweet-natured antidotes to the temper of the times, they all played it safe. It’s a legitimate way to win, but who doesn’t like an action-packed game over a grinding defensive victory? A bunt is as good as a hit, if we can switch sports briefly, but you want them swinging for the fences. Anyway, let’s discuss the spots.
Toyota’s Message Employed Sweet Nostalgia
In Superhero Belt, Toyota demonstrates the RAV4’s 30-year history, depicting a grandfather and grandson at different stages of their life together. It’s charming.
Nostalgia is a proven effective storytelling technique, but I wonder whether, on such a noisy day, this quiet story cut through attention-seeking monstrosities like Elijah Wood flogging Skittles as some creepy humanoid unicorn. (Look it up at your peril.)
Mind, when everyone else is hollering, you can stand out by quietly approaching your audience and whispering in their ear. The maxim? When they zig, you zag. (OK, that’s two lessons. Imagine: advertising people exaggerating.) The acting isn’t mawkish, just kindhearted. Such character subtlety is hard to establish and convey in 30 seconds. I give the spot 7.8/10.
Volkswagen Encourages People to Break Their Malaise
The commercial opens with assorted people idly bummed out, until friends arrive in assorted VWs, soundtracked to the immortal earworm Jump Around by the awesomely named House of Pain. Then everyone starts living with a capital L: dancing in the rain, returning soccer balls to kids who can’t climb a fence, and feeling free.
This series of eye-worm vignettes is creatively responsible and consistent with VW’s modern campaign voice, like this 2025 Tiguan ad. Note the campaign’s knack for infectious earworms, like this literally old but utterly of-the-moment Neil Diamond anthem. (You just hummed DUNT-DA-Daaaah, didn’t you?)
While I think the campaign’s better than 95 per cent of modern advertising, I still miss the days when VW told quirky stories in its demonstration ads. Its mark: 7.9/10.
The Most Strategic of All Three: Cadillac’s The Mission Begins!
Welcome to the future. Since F1 entered Las Vegas in 2023, Americans have gone gaga for this cosmopolitan emperor of races. In 2026, Cadillac joins F1. And during the Super Bowl, America’s classic and international upmarket car brand released its F1 livery (aka branding or look). The emperor was well clothed.
We presume that, for maximum impact, Cadillac chose not to share its Super Bowl commercial early. Another safe but strategically smart decision.
It’s essentially a comparison ad, though an audacious one. Employing JFK’s historic moonshot speech as voiceover, the spot harmonizes with Apple’s 1984 ad, the kickoff for mass water-cooler fodder that Super Bowl ads have since become. The effect, pure awe: 8.4/10.
This Just in From Canada’s Award-Winning Muscle Carmakers
Chances are, reader, you’re Canadian and aware that Canadian broadcasters substitute local CANCON commercials into Super Bowl cable feeds. Lucky us, we don’t see the American spots except in media like this.
At 10 am ET on Super Bowl Sunday, hours before Bell Media’s replacement feed went live, Stellantis Canada announced it would be airing a 30-second ad featuring the assembled-in-Canada Charger lineup in that feed.
They clearly wanted to call it a Super Bowl commercial. However, like elbows-up hoser Mike “Wayne” Meyers and his American sidekick Garth in 2021, the press release carefully winked the Big Game rather than dare announce SXXXR BXXL.
Speaking of playing it safe, the NFL is a thuggishly litigious bunch.
Nonetheless, congrats to our Canadian sisters and brothers from Stellantis’ Windsor Assembly Plant, aka South Detroit, makers of the 2026 North American Car of the Year Award. Stellantis calls the commercial Winner.
