From AI boyfriends to trillion-dollar tantrums—plus, what happened to Duo?
Issue #42
Weekly Exhale
“Super Bowl ads were a snooze fest this year”, posted Coco Mocoe on Monday. Mocoe is a creator and cultural commentator for a large online community obsessed with what's next. I dip in and out of her content— a window into the world of a generation raised online. Her post got just four replies, but one summed up the collective feeling perfectly: “We get it: Boomers are awesome. Young people just don’t understand.”
Some people have likened Super Bowl ads to UK Christmas ads. That’s like comparing Jupiter to the Moon—an atmospheric colossus next to a dusty space rock. Despite a global decline in TV advertising, Super Bowl airtime is way up. Today, you’ll pay $266,667 for each second, meaning most brands shed $30-50 million just to participate.
And so, with professional curiosity, I took a look.
After all, the year I started in advertising, our agency made Budweiser’s WASSSUP, the greatest Super Bowl ad of all time, bar Apple’s 1984.
To begin judging the ads, you must set aside the protest, politics and controversies that hit the Super Bowl this year. The CEO of Unilever seemed blissfully unaware:
“I rarely post about brand ads, but this one deserves a special mention,” he said before praising Hellman’s Mayonnaise for their recreation of When Harry Met Sally. Reuniting the stars from the 1989 film was iconic, I guess. But mostly? It was boring.
Then there’s the Jeep spot starring Harrison Ford, who, at 82, still has the rugged voice of Han Solo. Set in the plains of Santa Clarita, the ad had everything except a voice-over that made sense.
“Freedom is the roar of one man’s engine,” Ford utters, walking towards a Jeep like a lost Marlboro Man.
OpenAI ushered us into the future with some slick animated dots. Of course, Apple used the same concept in 2016 but far better. That’s OpenAI for you, a giant server scraping, learning and reusing what’s already been done.
And so the pattern of wooden celebrity performances and bad jokes continued as I scrubbed through the rest.
So far, Moco was right. Snoozy.
A former analyst in Scandinavia recently crunched ten years of Super Bowl ad data. It turns out that 72% of brands advertise in the Super Bowl once and never come back. Last year CeraVe hit 15.4 billion impressions before their Super Bowl ad even aired. So why didn’t they come back in 2025? Only 8% of brands have advertised in the Super Bowl five times or more (Hellman’s is one). The ones that stick around aren’t chasing results. They’re just flexing.
Another reply to Coco’s post asked a fair question: “Why waste big dollars on advertising when folks like us have no disposable income?”
If Super Bowl ads reflect the times, 2025 feels like the year when the distance between the haves and the have-nots has never been wider.
There’s another way to look at the Super Bowl ads
In 2022, over 40% of viewers surveyed said they enjoyed the ads more than the game. As it happens, the same percentage as people who eat popcorn at the movies. Now, if I handed you a litre of Diet Coke and a bucket of popcorn at 2pm, you’d say gross, too much.
But settle into a movie theatre at night, the lights dim, the trailers roll—and suddenly nothing tastes better. It’s the context. It doesn’t matter if the ads were good or bad. It only matters that they were there.
According to Nielsen, an estimated 127.7 million viewers tuned in for Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, February 9. This was the largest audience for a Super Bowl and for a single-network telecast in TV history.
As I asked around, it became clear that the Super Bowl transcends the sport, the ads and the halftime show. People host ‘watch parties’ adorned in team colours. Good-luck traditions, like Chief’s tight end Travis Kelce, who eats his mother’s homemade cookies just before the game starts. People gather in homes, bars, and public spaces—to experience something larger than themselves.
Last Sunday evening, a school night, my 12-year-old announced that he was staying up late to watch the Super Bowl. I didn’t have the energy to argue. It was the end of the weekend, and the idea made me feel nostalgic. Growing up, we stayed up to watch things a lot. Now, we have to stay up late because we can’t stop swiping.
Somehow, my son had already pulled an Eagles jersey from his wardrobe. (I wondered why I kept getting NFL newsletter emails. I vaguely remembered a receipt in my inbox. He has a way of hacking my PayPal.)
Over dinner, he walked me through the last six years of the Chiefs' domination. I told him I felt good about the Eagles winning, based on absolutely zero knowledge.
Then he vanished upstairs. I heard him on a call to his girlfriend from junior school, who lives in Colorado, getting ready for the big game. Kick-off was 11:30 pm. I went to bed.
Somewhere past midnight, I stirred.
I had that Dad feeling to check on him. Torn between my bed and instinct, I pulled myself up the stairs to his top-floor room.
He was fast asleep in his gaming chair, tilted all the way back, his face softly lit by the game streaming across his dual-screen monitors. He looked happy. I grabbed his bedspread and threw it over him. Snuck a kiss. His cheek is less squashy than it used to be. And, of course, it’s getting even more cringe for me to show any affection these days.
Walking back down the stairs, I thought about how much connection had been created over this game. Like our ancestors gathering around a big bonfire. It struck me that there are few fires left as big or as warm as the Super Bowl.
So, if you want to burn a load of cash being part of the stories told around the flames, who am I to judge?
And while you’re there?
Call a friend. Watch with family. Eat your mom’s cookies. And steal a kiss.
Because, like Coco Mocoe's fans, as we live isolated lives online, those things become worth more than all the Super Bowl money in the world.
Let's rise together with every issue. ♡
Market Movements
Surprise growth in UK at the end of 2024 | BBC
UK in 'wait and see' in the face of Trump tariffs | The Guardian
Stocks slip as Wall Street assess tariff outlook | CNBC
Brand Beat
Valentine's Day round-up: how brands are treating romance | Campaign
The Duolingo owl is dead, but what comes next? | Creative Bloq
Interview with new CMO of newly merged Carlsberg-Britvic | Creative Salon
Liquid Death exits the UK | The Grocer
Watchdog proposes sweeping changes for the baby formula industry | The Guardian
Let's dish: Racing to the bottom of fashion's gossip problem | Vogue Business
The beauty slowdown explained | Business of Fashion
Next ad banned for unhealthily thin model | The Guardian
Learn about Project Texas: How TikTok stays in the US | 2PM
How Vitality reinvented its brand mascot | MarketingWeek
Budweiser delivers Super Bowl winner | System1
Snapchat, Pinterest and Reddit turn to AI to capture SMB ad dollars | Digiday
Trending: Prebiotic sodas Poppi | Thingtesting
SharkNinka appoints a Chief Creative Officer | SharkNinja
Breakdown of Kanye's swastika Super Bowl stunt | Wall Street Journal
Inside the Murdoch's real life Succession drama | New York Times
Starting Up
Meet the filmmakers determined to change the film industry ecosystem | Maddyness
59 startup pitch decks that raised millions | The VC Corner
30-year-old takes on loneliness crisis with a social networking app | CNBC
Deliciously Ella acquires remnants of Allplants | Vegconomist
Business schools playing a role in incubating startup instincts | Financial Times
Unilever goes Wild with £230m acquisition of refillable cosmetics maker | Sky News
Tech Tidbits
Elon Musk's $97bn offer for OpenAI is a headache for Sam Altman | The Economist
Modern romance is a web of scams, AI boyfriends, and Tinder burnout | Wired
TikTok returns to Apple and Google app stores | The Guardian
UK refuses to release details of Peter Thiel's minister meeting | Financial Times
Bezos space firm Blue Origin to cut a tenth of jobs | BBC
UK signs up Anthropic to help transform public services | Fortune
Can this London-based AI agent maker beat OpenAI? | Sifted
Shifting fashions of tech billionaires in the race for power | Bloomberg
Venture Vibes
The NYSE is launching NYSE Texas | X
How this legendary NBA sixth man became a billionaire | Forbes
Founders Fund is about to close another $3 billion fund | TechCrunch
The all-women led VC firms in Europe | Sifted
Slow Ventures creates $60m fund for creators | Axios
Design Driven
New magic and mischief to Roald Dahl's stories | It's Nice That
Meet the makers defining tech's next chapter | Figma
A postcard from Stockholm design week 2025 | Wallpaper
Happiness
Why do kindness influencers get criticised? | BBC
Feel better by putting a vibrating iPhone to your heart | Fast Company
If we want artificial superintelligence, it may need to feel pain | Big Think
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