Super Bowl campaign lessons: Emotional resonance over flash

02.12.26

Erin Ruane
Erin is a Strategist at Invision with more than a decade of experience in experiential marketing and brand strategy, leading audience journey workshops, advising C-level clients, and developing experiential portfolios and messaging for brands.

2026 Super Bowl campaign lessons: Emotional resonance over flash

Invision’s latest Business of Experiential report identified a clear mandate for brands: build trust through authenticity and emotional resonance. In a landscape where audiences actively choose what and who they engage, this year’s Super Bowl ads proved that mandate is already shaping creative strategy.

Audiences are inundated with content at unprecedented levels. The ‘art of the ad teaser’ has emerged as a storytelling device, serving as a first touchpoint in a larger integrated campaign. By offering a glimpse of what’s to come on Super Bowl Sunday, brand marketers tap into a best practice experiential marketers know well: buzz building.  The ‘art of the teaser’ phenomenon isn’t about explicitly building trust; it's about building anticipation.  

By offering early or exclusive access, brands encourage investment. Teasers tap into FOMO, but more importantly, they accelerate that all-important sense of trust. When audiences feel like insiders rather than bystanders, they’re more likely to lean in. 

The smartest event marketers understand this dynamic: excitement isn’t built the day of the event; it’s engineered in advance. This year, many brands used teasers not just to preview their spots, but to invite audiences into a “can’t miss” cultural moment before it unfolded. 

Teasers ranged from familiar to abstract to outright absurd. A few standouts ahead of the Big Game included Dunkin’s nostalgic cast, along with buzz from Squarespace, Instacart, Pepsi and Liquid Death.

But the strategy didn’t stop at teasing.

Emotions over spectacle

That same trust-building dynamic carried into the spots themselves. In a fast-shifting, unpredictable world, audiences are fatigued—distrustful of institutions, anxious around technology, uncertain about what’s next. On Sunday, most brands avoided overt political statements or heavy-handed value messaging. Instead, three emotional strategies emerged: humor, nostalgia, and even light horror. The tensions weren’t ignored; they were confrontational, replacing anxiety with warmth, comfort, and shared cultural touchpoints.

Horror 
Increasingly, horror has become a vehicle for addressing cultural taboos and unspoken fears. In Amazon’s Alexa+ spot, Liam Hemsworth voices the anxieties many people feel about AI’s rapid integration into daily life. His exaggerated panic names the tension directly, allowing the brand to regain control of the narrative. 

In doing so, Amazon gives the audience permission to acknowledge their own discomfort. By engaging fear rather than glossing over it, Amazon attempts to signal authenticity. That honesty builds trust far more effectively than polished reassurance. 

For experiential marketers, the lesson isn’t to turn every activation into a haunted house. It’s to resist sanitizing experiences, content and connection. Audiences don’t need perfection. Whether addressing AI, climate anxiety, or health concerns, the brands that earn trust are the ones willing to sit in the tension and design experiences that confront it thoughtfully rather than sugarcoat it.

Humor 
In a different but equally effective approach, pharmaceutical brand Novartis used humor to address the discomfort surrounding prostate cancer screenings. The delivery of “Relax Your Tight End” was light, conversational, and human—exactly the tone audiences say they want from leaders on the keynote stage (Invision Business of experiential report). 

While the delivery stayed light, the campaign’s commitment went deep. Beyond the Super Bowl spot, the campaign launched an NFL partnership, mobile health screening activations in select cities and a comprehensive digital toolkit designed to drive real action.

It’s uncommon to see a pharmaceutical company run a PSA during the Super Bowl but the audience made it a smart fit. And sometimes, unexpected presence makes a message hard to ignore. 

Nostalgia
A third tonal theme was nostalgia. From Dunkin’s Good Will Dunkin to Instacart’s disco-fueled bananas to a reimagined Jurassic Park, brands leaned into familiar worlds and recognizable characters. In a fragmented, multigenerational moment like the Super Bowl, nostalgia becomes efficient storytelling. Older viewers feel recognition; younger audiences, drawn to retro aesthetics and cultural callbacks, experience rediscovery. Either way, familiarity lowers the barrier to engagement. 

Dunkin’s execution worked because it felt self-aware. The familiar cast and Good Will parody created warmth and approachability. Rather than reinvent the brand, it leaned into what people already love—and extended the joke with iced coffee on Super Bowl Monday, turning the moment into something tangible.  

Instacart took a different route, using disco energy and playful absurdity to introduce its Preference Picker, anchored around bananas, its top-selling item. The tone was fun; the message, functional. The Jurassic Park reimagining ad by Infinity tapped into something deeper—a desire to rewrite endings and imagine a different outcome. Here, nostalgia became emotional currency.  

For experiential marketers, the takeaway is practical. Large-scale moments like the Super Bowl and other flagship events must resonate across generations. Nostalgia can unify, creating shared language across ages, roles, and perspectives. The opportunity isn’t to live in the past, but to use it as connective tissue—pairing familiarity with something new, relevant and actionable.  

Final thoughts
If this year’s Super Bowl proved anything, it’s that spectacle alone doesn’t move people. Whether through early access, humor that names discomfort or nostalgia that creates shared ground, the most effective brands prioritized emotional resonance. In a fragmented, fatigued landscape, authenticity isn’t a trend, it’s required. The marketers who build for trust at every touchpoint won’t just win the moment; they’ll win what comes next.