Amid the beer and financial services ads running in this year’s Super Bowl, expect a few spots dedicated to sweet treats.
Nerds, Reese’s, and Häagen-Dazs are all running ads in the game, with Nerds returning to the game for a second year in a row to promote its Gummy Clusters, Reese’s highlighting its new Chocolate Lava Big Cup for its third appearance in the game, and Häagen-Dazs making its Super Bowl debut to promote its ice cream bars.
While it’s a drop from last year, when six candy and dessert brands showed up in the big game, it could be evidence of a growing trend. In 2023, only one sweet treat, M&Ms, appeared in the Super Bowl, and it’s been more typical in the last 15 years to see just one or two candy and dessert brands appear in the game, according to data compiled by iSpot for Marketing Brew.
The sugar rush comes as the sweet-treat business faces headwinds. Consumers are increasingly turning to GLP-1 drugs to help with weight loss, a trend that has spooked some in the candy and dessert space, and inflation, tariffs, and other factors are expected to continue affecting consumers’ grocery bills this year. But ice cream and candy brands are still heading to the Super Bowl in efforts to sustain consumer interest.
“The Super Bowl is one of the biggest snacking occasions in the United States, and it is the perfect opportunity for a brand to connect with audiences,” Rachel Jaiven, marketing director at Häagen-Dazs, told Marketing Brew.
Go big or go home
During this year’s game, Reese’s will return for the second year in a row, this time to promote its new Chocolate Lava Big Cup product, with a 30-second ad that depicts visitors to a volcano trying to push past park rangers in an effort to get a taste of lava. (The campaign will also receive OOH, digital, and social placements.)
The buy is intended to complement Reese’s “large seasonal business,” Ryan Riess, VP of brand strategy and creative development at Reese’s parent company, Hershey, said. Reese’s, often popular around holidays like Halloween and Easter, when it offers limited-edition, holiday-specific versions of its signature product, sees about 50% household penetration annually, he said.
“It's really important to leverage those big moments that are relevant to consumers because big brands do big things at relevant times, and I think Reese’s does that very well,” Riess said. “The Super Bowl is such a concentrated moment; it’s almost a national holiday.”
Häagen-Dazs, meanwhile, is taking a page out of Hollywood’s book for its first appearance in the game and following in the footsteps of its sister brand Drumstick, which notched its first Super Bowl appearance last year, according to Jaiven.
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The 30-second ad, which features Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez from the Fast and Furious franchise slowing down during a high-speed car chase with Ludacris to enjoy ice cream bars, will run on linear as well as on social and digital, plus a custom branded 1963 Cadillac Series 62 convertible that will be driven from LA to New Orleans, where the game is taking place, in an activation called Dazs Drive.
“Leading up to the game, we developed a strategy with the approach of a film release with teasers,” Jaiven said. The teasers “were intended to act really similar to a film trailer, where you put information out digitally and via linear to audiences to get them to be really intrigued.”
Nerds, which is returning to the game for the second consecutive year, is using the stage to promote its Gummy Clusters product, which as of December had seen a 50% YoY spike in retail dollar sales, Marketing Brew previously reported.
Take a bite
Cocoa prices are at a record high, driving up chocolate prices at the same time that inflation continues to put pressure on consumers’ discretionary spending, but some consumers may not feel that a candy purchase is too much of an indulgence, according to Greg Carlucci, a senior director analyst at Gartner who focuses on CPG.
“Customers are really price-trapped and frustrated, and I think it actually presents a unique opportunity for candy brands that traditionally are lower-priced [than] luxury products,” he said.
Perhaps a larger force is the rising popularity of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, which are getting front-row billing in this year’s Super Bowl. Morgan Stanley has indicated that GLP-1s could affect companies like Hershey, and has projected that ice cream consumption as a whole could drop 5.3% by 2035. Some dairy brands are making changes to their frozen treats or even emphasizing that, when consumed in moderation, some of these products can be “a source of calcium,” Ad Age reported.
Häagen-Dazs’s Jaiven, who told Ad Age last year that the ice cream company is “not going to be a brand that focuses on ‘better for you,’” is looking to capitalize on the “treat yourself” trend, especially as its frozen treats, like cones, bars, and sandwiches, have found sustained popularity.
“Consumers are looking for small—and indulgent, in our case—snacks to treat themselves,” Jaiven said.