I 🫶🏻 Super Bowl commercials.
Plus Millennial packaging, Anora, and stinky flowers 🥀
In the last issue, I publicly hoped that there would be an actually funny Super Bowl commercial this year. It was a little snarky, but mostly my reaction to not having seen something that made me truly laugh out loud in a few years. I was going to write a little about why Super Bowl commercials aren’t as good as they used to be. Maybe I could try to break down the humor differences between generations—the clear buckets of nostalgia vs. absurdism we’re likely to witness. I could find an easy target and blame clients for being less adventurous, unwilling to lean into the irreverence often needed for truly great humor. Or the over-reliance on celebrity cameos.
But I stopped myself.
Part of what I want to do with this newsletter is to help bring back some community to this industry. LinkedIn is fine, but full of overly positive platitudes. Fishbowl is fine if you enjoy simmering cynicism served anonymously. Every app cleverly tapping into our still-evolving brains.
I thought about the joy that comes from working on a Super Bowl commercial—even if the commercial is forgettable. Your parents get a delightful talking point to brag about. Your friends cheer for you at the party as you sip the IPAs that your commercial just made fun of. For this one day in February, your industry isn’t an interrupter of culture—it’s a bringer.
Happy Super Bowl Commercial Season!*
I’m rooting for every one of you who is currently stuck in a round of never-ending final edits, addressing unexpected feedback from scared Chief Whatever Officers, or just now realizing that your commercial might be the one everyone makes fun of. Enjoy every moment.
*If you’re in the UK: all the above, but make it Christmas.
The Buy Now! tip line had some technical difficulties, but it’s coming soon.
Zillow is hiring for a Creative Director, Social and Cultural Architect. Full disclosure: I’m doing some work for Zillow still. That said, even having worked for this company I have no idea what this job title means. But Zillow is fully remote with no plans to change, so you might be interested.
Strategy celebrity Julian Cole posted this helpful list of AI tools. I also want to stress that I waited until Issue 2 before mentioning AI.
The owner of the candy shop from Anora is excited for the film’s Oscar nominations, but also experiencing a familiar feeling for anyone who has offered their place as a filming location: “It was a hard watch. It looked like they were destroying my store…I went through hell that day. There were so many people here, and I didn’t know what was happening in my store.”
Brooklyn’s own corpse flower that smells like “rotting flesh” is blooming through this weekend. Someone reach out to Glade’s experiential team ASAP.
Kudos to the Blackbird Spyplane team for their in-depth look into “Affluent Millennial”-coded packaging. Hard agree with their love of the Rain-X brand.
Mr. Beast is hiring more creative and content folks than all of the tech industry right now.
Tumi hiring for Head of Global Creative Services and the $250k max is higher than most I’m seeing these days.
Amazon is hiring for a Creative Director in their XCM division. Since the RTO announcement, I expect we’ll see a few more job listings from Amazon.
If you become Gap’s new Senior Creative Director, you can at least tell your Raya dates that you’re a “creative director in fashion.”
This is my job of the week. Not only is being the Creative Director of the WNBA great on paper, but the job description doesn’t feel written by AI. Check out these green flags:
🟩 “Lead your team of creatives and encourage them to make the best work of their lives. Guiding them to make good decisions but giving them the space to develop their own creative instincts (letting them fail from time to time).”
🟩 “Try Stuff – Sports is one of the most dynamic platforms for Brands. Our fans expect more from us every day, driving us to rethink their experience all the time. That gives us some ability to think differently and take creative risks. Not only in what we make but how we do it. And we’ll be fully supportive of it.
🟩 Maybe you’ll get to help brand a new WNBA team!
Portfolio of the Week: Sebastian Gomez