As a football fan and a branding professional, I'm looking forward to Super Bowl LX. The Seahawks and Patriots should make for a great game. But, while I certainly appreciate the play on the field, I'm much more adept at being an armchair quarterback when it comes to refereeing the advertising. Given that many of the ads are available for pre-game viewing, I'm here to make a call on what I've seen.

And what I've seen is a problem.

Using celebrities in Super Bowl ads is hardly new. It's been part of the playbook for decades. But this year, we've gone from a few stars to an avalanche. Look at the roster, and you'd think you were watching an awards show, not a football game. Peyton Manning, Post Malone, and Shane Gillis for Bud Light. Kurt Russell and Chloe Kim for Michelob Ultra. Ben Affleck is back again for Dunkin'. Sabrina Carpenter for Pringles. Lady Gaga for Rocket Mortgage. Matthew McConaughey and Bradley Cooper for Uber Eats. Ben Stiller for Instacart. Emma Stone for Squarespace. Serena Williams for Ro. Kendall Jenner for Fanatics. Even Andy Samberg doing his best 1970s Neil Diamond impression, sequined jumpsuit and all, for Hellmann's Mayo.

The list goes on. And on. And on.

Here's the issue: when everyone runs the same play, most will lose.

The 2026 Super Bowl advertising playbook has become painfully predictable. Step one: get a star, any will do, whether from sports, music, Instagram, or movies. Step two: write a "funny" script that loosely connects the celebrity to the brand. Step three: target the mansphere. Step four: call it a day.

The problem with this approach isn't just creative laziness. It's that the usual risk of using celebrities, which is significant in any year, gets turbocharged when everyone is doing it. In a typical Super Bowl, viewers might see a handful of famous faces. This year, they'll see dozens. The celebrities will blur together. The jokes will blur together. And most critically, the brands will blur together.

The classic celebrity trap is well documented: people remember the celebrity, but not the brand. And if they do remember the brand, they can't remember, or believe, what the celebrity said about it. Why would anyone think Kendall Jenner has genuine insight into sports betting? Or that Matthew McConaughey has a sincere take on food delivery? These are borrowed interest plays, where brands glom onto star power, hoping some of the shine rubs off. It usually doesn't.

This year, with celebrity saturation at an all-time high, even the borrowed interest will be diluted. It's one thing to stand out in a crowd of five celebrities. It's another when there are fifty.

There is, however, one potential bright spot.

Salesforce appears to be zigging while everyone else zags. Instead of hiring a traditional Hollywood celebrity to show up and read lines, they handed creative control to MrBeast, the YouTube creator with over 340 million subscribers who pitched the concept himself. He's not just the face of the ad; he developed the idea and is executing it his way.
 

That's a fundamentally different approach. Rather than paying for borrowed interest, Salesforce is betting on genuine content creation from someone who actually knows how to capture and hold attention. MrBeast built his empire by understanding what makes people watch, share, and remember. That's a skill set most traditional celebrities, and frankly most ad agencies, don't have.

Will it work? We'll see on February 8th. But while dozens of brands are shelling out $8 million for 30 seconds of celebrity sizzle, Salesforce is making a different bet: that the winning play isn't about who you hire. It's about what you have to say.

On Monday morning, most viewers won't remember which brand paired which celebrity with which punchline. But they might remember the ad that actually had an idea.

That's the difference between running the same play as everyone else and actually trying to score.

Before you sell me anything, get me to trust you

by Allen Adamson