Beyond the Rankings: Super Bowl Ad Truths
February 13 @ 9:30 am – 10:00 am PST
By Monday morning, everyone will have the same Super Bowl ad rankings. USA Today’s Ad Meter will crown its winners, social media will have picked its favorites, and every marketing blog will run the same “Top 10” list. But rankings don’t explain why some spots disappeared from memory before halftime while others built cultural moments that will outlast the season. The real story isn’t who scored highest — it’s the talent decisions, creative bets, and strategic plays behind the scores that most recaps completely miss.
Join Lori Golden and Paul Williams from Abalone Partners for a conversation that goes beyond the highlight reel. With deep experience spanning talent strategy, creative evaluation, and the business side of entertainment marketing — including the GoDaddy/Walton Goggins Super Bowl spot that won a Cannes Grand Prix — they’ll break down which brands made genuinely smart talent decisions versus just writing celebrity checks, what the rankings got wrong, which creative bets actually paid off and why, and what every agency and CMO should take from this year’s game into their 2026 playbook. If you’re tired of “Top 10” lists that tell you what you already know, this is the recap that tells you what it actually means.
Who should watch:
🟢 Creative directors benchmarking their own work against the biggest stage in advertising
🟢 CMOs evaluating what “worth the investment” actually looks like at Super Bowl scale
🟢 Brand strategists studying which creative bets paid off and why
🟢 New business leads looking for conversation starters with prospects
🟢 Indie agency teams wanting conference-level analysis they can reference with clients
indiework #indieswork #superbowlads #creativeleadership #superbowlLX #adstrategy
