Lori Golden, partner at Abalone Partners, negotiates celebrity talent deals, music licensing and IP for brands and agencies alongside her colleague Paul Williams. Brian Siedband, co-founder and co-CCO of Quality Meats in Chicago, just put Manscaped on the Super Bowl stage — a spot built around a choir of mourning body hair that somehow made body grooming feel cinematic. Between the three of them, they touch every pressure point of a big game ad before it ever reaches a screen.
Their collective verdict on this year’s game? Williams borrowed a word from his 12-year-old daughter: mid.
A 12-year-old called it
There’s something deflating about watching the most expensive night in advertising and walking away with a shrug. That was the vibe.
Williams saw flashes of good creativity, a few heartstring moments and a wave of AI experiments — but an avalanche of celebrity that didn’t earn its place. “I would watch it, and I was just like, that’s cool. Was that necessary?” he says. “And listen, I would have loved to have done those deals, but I think I would have still said, was it necessary afterwards?”
Golden felt it too — the humor didn’t hit the way it usually does. Friends outside the industry, the ones who watch for fun and not for homework, told her the same thing.
Look at the top of the USA Today Ad Meter: Budweiser and Lay’s, both tugging heartstrings, neither swinging for laughs. Advertising’s biggest party, and the room felt strangely subdued.
Constraint is Quality Meats’ superpower
Siedband runs a small shop on purpose. Quality Meats — the name itself is a dare — puts a high bar on everything that goes out the door and doesn’t apologize for it. “It’s not Mediocre Meats,” he says with the kind of confidence that only lands when the work backs it up.
Small team, fast decisions, clients like Manscaped who trust the agency to go big without a committee standing in the way. “That’s absolutely our superpower,” Siedband says. “We don’t overthink things. We’re able to move really quick. Clients want that and appreciate that.”
There’s a regional Emmy on the shelf behind him during the conversation — for an anti-gun violence PSA, not the body hair choir. “At least it was something good,” he says. “I mean, there’s still gun violence, so it didn’t work, but at least it was something good we’re putting in the world.”
That mix of irreverence and conscience is the Quality Meats brand in a sentence.
The quietest spot in the room
Here’s where the conversation turned. Siedband watched the Anthropic spot for Claude — the work out of Mother London, an IAN member — and thought it was brilliant but didn’t have “Super Bowl ingredients.” Too insightful, too awkward, too quiet. Then it landed with a broad audience in a Super Bowl living room, and that changed his whole read on the night. “It’s very insightful, it’s awkward, it’s quiet. So the fact that that landed — to me, that’s exciting,” he says. “That gives me faith. Really smart insight, executed really well, will win.”
That’s the thesis of the entire conversation distilled into one line: “Sometimes the loudest work isn’t the loudest.” Restraint beats spectacle when there’s a real idea underneath. The one exception Siedband would allow? Instacart. “That was so well crafted and fun.” Every rule needs a favorite violation.
Gen Z barely got a mention
Golden ran the numbers on talent choices aimed at Gen Z and came up short — fewer than a handful, for an audience that was absolutely watching. She pointed to Benson Boone as one of the few names that tracked with that demo. “I bet he got a lot of calls on Super Bowl,” she says. It’s a strange blind spot for a night built on cultural attention.
The bigger issue is authenticity. Consumers can smell a celebrity dropped into a concept because someone could afford them versus because they belong there. “People know this now,” Golden says.
Williams backed her up — Dunkin’ and the Novartis “tight end” pharma concept earned their talent choices. Bosch with Guy Fieri worked. On the music side, Golden flagged Redfin’s use of the Mr. Rogers theme and the James Brown track in the Levi’s spot as moments where the sound wasn’t just a needle drop — it was the idea.
The long game still works
Golden brought up GoDaddy’s Super Bowl campaign from the previous year — one Abalone Partners and Quality Meats worked on together — as proof that a big game spot doesn’t have to be a one-and-done firework. The team built out a product line and goggles, the spot aired, and when the talent’s moment exploded afterward, the campaign had legs to keep running.
“That was a good long game, but also still a great use of teasers,” Golden says.
Williams added the tactical layer: find up-and-coming talent on the edge of a breakout, not names everyone already knows. “If the show is going to pop, or they’re going to be doing something, you ride that wave with them,” he says. “You get those ancillary legs after the Super Bowl.”
The brands that treat the game as a launchpad — not a finish line — are the ones still talking about their spot in March.
What to tell the CMO planning next year
Three people, three clear messages. Golden wants brands to stop asking “who’s famous?” and start asking “will the audience understand why this person is in our spot?” Siedband says trust the idea. “If you’re using celebrity, great. But make sure it’s built into the idea. If you take the celebrity out and it falls apart, that said everything.”
Williams’ advice is the most tactical: package the right talent with the right teasers, craft the spot, then stack the tent poles afterward. The Super Bowl isn’t a one-night stand. It’s supposed to be the beginning.
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