For the Super Bowl viewer, a parade of celebrities in the ads has become part of the game night fun. It’s not just the Halftime Show that brings us special guests, we’ve come to expect them in every commercial break. And it’s resulted in a celebrity arms race. A decade ago, an ad might feature a single superstar; now it feels like they come in bundles, with actors and influencers rubbing shoulders with athletes and turning every ad into a party.

It’s entertaining, and it gives viewers something to talk about. But is it effective? The evidence on that is more ambiguous than you might expect. System1’s Test Your Ad platform has been testing every Super Bowl ad for effectiveness for over a decade, using measures that predict both long-term and short-term potential for an ad to grow a brand, and that also measure the level of Brand Fluency, or rapid recognition.

What we’ve found is that Super Bowl ads which feature a celebrity score exactly as well on average as the ones that don’t. A celebrity certainly doesn’t harm your ad, but it won’t automatically help it either. For every Super Bowl classic like Bill Murray recreating Groundhog’s Day for Jeep there’s an ad like last year’s Nerds commercial, where baffled viewers saw influencer Addison Rae teach a giant gummy to flashdance.

So what could brands be doing better? Let’s think about why brands use celebrities at all and what the risks might be. There’s the buzz factor of getting an ad talked about, though when everyone has a star in their commercial that becomes less likely. There’s the need to entertain the huge TV audience that Super Bowls uniquely deliver. And for less well known brands there’s the endorsement factor - the feeling that a celebrity adding their face to your ad gives a brand higher recognition and credibility.

Set against that there are two big problems. Is a celebrity really promoting your brand, or are they promoting themselves? And if you can only use a celebrity once, how do you build creative consistency in future commercials? Both these problems have the same root cause - losing sight of the fact that a Super Bowl ad is ultimately a showcase for your brand.

There are two ways you can avoid this issue. One is to use celebrities well, finding the sweet spot where what they’re famous for joins up with what you need them to do. At System1 we’ve found that using a celebrity as a kind of walking cultural reference is particularly effective, taking what they’re best known for and tying it to a brand. This year, for instance, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal reenact the famous ‘diner scene’ from When Harry Met Sally for Hellmann’s, with the mayonnaise right at the centre of the story.

It’s a fun, nostalgic and attention-getting use of celebrities but it’s firmly tied to the brand. And Hellmann’s looks like they’ll end up with a strong position in 2025’s final list of top ads, even with only a few full commercials released.

But there’s another way a brand can dodge the potential pitfalls of using celebrities. They can make their own. Characters created and owned by the brand, and used in ads over years or even decades, are what we at System1 call Fluent Devices. They’re creative devices which, because they’re used repeatedly in campaigns, become brand assets in their own right and grow the brand’s recognition, or Fluency. Think the GEICO Gecko or the M&Ms Spokescandies, for instance. Viewers don’t just recognise these characters like they would a logo; they enjoy seeing them and anticipate entertainment. So Fluent Device characters give you two benefits in one - strong branding and great emotional response.

There’s a fine example in this year’s Super Bowl from Budweiser. For decades now they’ve been associated with their Clydesdale horses, and back in the 2010s they began to use the horses to tell stories in Super Bowl ads. These ads scored brilliantly for emotional response but didn’t always have the direct tie to the brand you might expect. Now the Clydesdales are back and this time the ads have a firm link to the Budweiser brand.

In the 2025 example, a Clydesdale foal is told he’s too small to pull the cart of Budweiser barrels to a hard-to-reach bar. But when one of the barrels falls off the cart, he gets his chance, and sets off on a perilous journey pushing it along with his nose. There’s a happy ending of course, and a good joke to finish off with.

The ad gets high scores both on System1’s Star Rating, which predicts long-term potential, but also on Brand Fluency - the speed and ease of brand recognition. And there’s not a celebrity in sight, just a tried-and-true brand asset. We’ll see the usual line-up of star cameos on February 9th, but some of the most effective ads will still be from brands who have gone their own way and built a famous face, not just bought one.