System, Sizzle & Sales Impact of Super Bowl 2026 with CMO Nataly Kelly

Zappi CMO Nataly Kelly joins to talk about the Sizzle, Systems & Sales Impact of The Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is advertising’s biggest stage. $8 million for 30 seconds. Cultural noise at maximum volume. Celebrities everywhere. Music in almost every ad.

But once the spectacle fades, one question remains: which ads actually drove impact?

In this episode, we unpack the Zappi Super Bowl 2026 report (check it out here) built from testing every ad live with 20,000 American category buyers and benchmarking them against the top 100 performing TV ads in the US.

We explore:

– Why emotional response alone isn’t enough

– The role of purchase likelihood in predicting sales impact

– How celebrities can amplify an ad — or bury the brand

– Why distinctive brand assets (Budweiser’s Clydesdales, Nerds’ characters) still matter

– The Pepsi polar bear debate and what it says about brand memory

– How health brands like Wegovy, Hims & Hers and Ro cut through

– Why the best Super Bowl ads are part of a system, not a one-night stunt

This conversation goes beyond ranking ads. It looks at what actually moves the needle — and what marketers without Super Bowl budgets can learn from the world’s most expensive media moment. Zappi’s full report is available at zappi.io here.

Chapters

2:25 – What Zappi Measures

4:07 – How the Super Bowl Ads Were Tested Live

5:00 – Celebrity Usage: Amplifier or Distraction?

8:54 – Brand Recall vs Entertainment

10:15 – Super Bowl Ads as Part of a System

12:38 – Music, Multi-Screening & Attention

13:54 – Health Brands, Outrage & Cultural Relevance

16:12 – Why Budweiser Still Wins with Distinctive Assets

18:34 – Pepsi, Polar Bears & the Coke Asset Debate

20:41 – System Over Sizzle: Campaign vs One Night

23:40 – The Emotional Power of Lays

24:35 – Nerds, Product Demonstration & Penetration

27:00 – What Marketers Without Super Bowl Budgets Should Learn

31:56 – Are Super Bowl Trends Changing?

36:50 – Favourite Ad

38:00 – Why Sales Impact Still Matters Most

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