Super Bowl Ads Ranked: OpenAI vs Claude Beef, Levi's Genius, Coinbase's Fail with Dr. Marcus Collins
Sam Altman publicly clapped back at Anthropic's Super Bowl attack ad. Only 7% of consumers even know what Claude is versus 73% for ChatGPT. So why did the market leader punch down? Dr. Marcus Collins, marketing professor at the University of Michigan and author of "For the Culture," compares it to the time Drake made the mistake of responding to Pusha T and got bodied with "The Story of Adidon." When you're the market leader, you don't engage the challenger. You're just giving them more light.
This week we go through every major Super Bowl ad and figure out what worked, what flopped, and what it tells us about where marketing is headed. Marcus breaks down why Anthropic's ad felt like "they were in the group chat" while OpenAI's Codex spot was so abstract most people didn't even know it was OpenAI. We talk about Levi's making their first Super Bowl appearance in over 20 years with "Backstories," a spot that featured nothing but celebrity butts and the red tab. It somehow managed to be the only ad that night where the brand outshined the celebrities. Think Apple's iPod silhouette ads but for jeans.
We get into Coinbase's Backstreet Boys karaoke spot that USA Today gave an F and had people literally flipping off their TVs. But Marcus makes a case that they "broke the brief," and that breaking the traditional Super Bowl ad format is the only way to cut through now that expectations have gotten impossibly high. We talk about Ring Camera's lost dog ad backfiring into a full surveillance state backlash (they're finding one dog per day, Marcus did the math), Google Gemini playing it safe with their closed ecosystem approach, and why movie trailers like Scream 7 and Netflix's surprise Cliff Booth spinoff cut through harder than most of the actual ads.
We also get into my Monsters Inc theory of marketing. We're stuck on the scare floor right now, trying to make people angry or afraid to get engagement. But the laugh floor generates just as much energy. Marcus backs it up with Jonah Berger's research on why we share: biologically, anger and joy trigger the exact same physical response. It's the boring middle where people do nothing.
We wrap with why monoculture events are expanding beyond the Super Bowl. The Olympics in LA in 2028, the World Cup this year, F1 races where AI companies like Google and Perplexity are already attaching themselves to teams. If you're a marketer or a founder trying to figure out where brand advertising is going, this one's for you.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro 0:23 - OpenAI vs Anthropic/Claude: The Super Bowl AI Ad War
4:10 - Market Leaders vs Challengers: The Drake vs Pusha T Rule
18:27 - The Monsters Inc Theory of Marketing
24:25 - Levi's "Backstories": Celebrity Butts and the Red Tab
32:00 - Coinbase Backstreet Boys: USA Today's Only F
40:36 - Google Gemini: Safe Play or Missed Opportunity?
44:57 - Ring Camera: How to Accidentally Advertise a Surveillance State
56:54 - Super Bowl Movie Trailers: Who Showed Up and Who Didn't
1:10:27 - Takeaways: Break the Brief & the Future of Monoculture Events
ABOUT THE GUEST: Dr. Marcus Collins is a marketing professor at the University of Michigan School of Business, bestselling author of "For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be," and co-host of the podcast "From the Culture." He's spent his career making ads for brands like Nike and Apple, and was named one of Advertising Age's 40 Under 40. Follow him: @marctothec
