Super Bowl Sunday is supposed to be about the game, the snacks, the company. Then a 60-second commercial airs and suddenly you're reaching for tissues while everyone else is reaching for wings.
The best Super Bowl ads don't sell you a product—they sell you a feeling so specific and true that it bypasses your defenses entirely. They work because they understand something fundamental: the moments that matter most aren't about the thing being advertised. They're about loss, connection, the people we love, the time we don't get back.
These five commercials proved that a half-minute can hold more emotional weight than most feature films.
We're a new kind of news feed.
Regular news is designed to drain you. We're a non-profit built to restore you. Every story we publish is scored for impact, progress, and hope.
Start Your News DetoxThe ones that broke through
Nationwide's "Boy" (2015) opened with a young voice describing a life unlived. A bike ride. A first kiss. A wedding day. A dog. Then the reveal: the boy was already dead, describing the accidents that would never happen because he wouldn't be here to have them. It worked because it was unsparing—not sentimental, just honest about what we're afraid to lose. Parents watching didn't need Nationwide to spell out the solution. The dread did that work for them.
Google's "Loretta" (2020) took a different approach: showing what remains when memory starts to slip. An elderly man with dementia asks Google to help him remember his wife. He searches for her favorite foods, their travels, photos from their life together. Google becomes a vessel for what he's losing, a way to hold on when holding on is the only thing left to do. It humanized a search engine by showing it could do something that actually mattered—preserve love in digital form.
Budweiser's "Brotherhood" (2013) paired a farm, a man, a foal, and Stevie Nicks' "Landslide" into something almost unbearably tender. The horse becomes a Clydesdale. They're separated. Years later, at a Chicago parade, the horse recognizes his person in the crowd and breaks free to reach him. It worked because it tapped into something almost everyone understands: the bond with an animal that grows up alongside you, that knows you.
Kia's "Perfect 10" (2024) showed a young figure skater performing for an audience with an empty seat—the mother who didn't make it. The father watches with the weight of that absence visible on his face. Later, the girl skates on her grandparents' pond, lit up by Kia headlights, while her grandfather traces a "10" on a foggy window in the house. It's grief made visible, and the commercial doesn't look away from it.
Nissan's "With Dad" (2015) used Harry Chapin's "Cats in the Cradle"—a song already about absence—to tell the story of a Nascar driver's son waiting for his father to show up. The child grows up wanting to be just like the man who's never there. The reunion at the end, when the father finally arrives, carries the weight of every missed moment. It worked because it acknowledged that some people live this story, and some people fear they will.
These ads succeeded not because they were manipulative, but because they were precise. They found the specific ache that connects strangers—the fear of loss, the weight of absence, the way love persists even when people can't. They reminded millions of people watching a football game that the people and animals in their own lives won't always be there, and that matters more than any product.
