Those who watch the Super Bowl "for the commercials" now have reason to monitor the run-up to the big game, too. The days of Apple airing its iconic "1984" commercial once during the broadcast and never again are over. Brands seek to own "a multi-week cultural moment" of viral buzz, a creative exec tells Sportico. That means companies like Rocket, Ro, and Salesforce have already released teasers, Easter eggs, and celebrity cameos featuring the likes of Lady Gaga, Serena William,s and MrBeast — with many ads viewable online before the Feb. 8 game.
In less than two weeks, more than 120 million people are expected to tune into the biggest advertising moment of the year: the Super Bowl. Companies shelled out about $8 million for 30 seconds of airtime, and that’s not even counting the additional costs of agencies, celebrity endorsers, production, and the post-production process.
Even with that price tag, NBC Universal, which will be broadcasting Super Bowl LX, sold out of its commercial inventory back in September, before the NFL regular season even kicked off. This year, the marketing occasion has attracted major brands, including OpenAI, Salesforce, Instacart, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, Pringles, and Skittles, which have either made announcements or released teaser trailers ahead of the big game.
Inc. spoke with one entrepreneur whose company will be in that vaunted marketing mix. Andrew Dudum, co-founder and CEO of the telehealth company Hims & Hers, invested in a Super Bowl ad for the second straight year. The business, which has skyrocketed from startup to $6.7 billion public company in less than a decade, released its one-minute-long commercial, titled “Rich People Live Longer,” earlier today.
Dudum spoke exclusively with Inc. and shared his strategy for crafting a Super Bowl commercial that will get people talking. The interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
What was your approach to this year’s Super Bowl ad? What was the goal for Hims & Hers?
I like this stage as an opportunity to say something that we feel is really important, versus selling something. We spend a billion dollars in marketing a year talking about our products, but the Super Bowl is a really unique moment to talk about purpose. What this spot is doing is highlighting a really important and concerning dynamic. As the wealth gap in this country is continuing to accelerate more than ever before, where that is making the most difficult impact on people’s lives is on the health care side.
The speed of innovation in longevity, peptides, preventative tests, diagnostics—I get the privilege of being at the front row of this stuff all day long, given the nature of our business. It is accelerating at an incredible pace. The people who have access to money and resources are actually living longer. They’re able to get preventative care before it’s needed. They’re able to get precise treatments that aren’t available [to others]. This wealth gap is very quickly becoming a health gap. It was a really important moment for us to tell that story, acknowledging that this gap in health care is a problem, and needs to be resolved, and it can be solved.
The wealth gap, the health gap, these are serious subjects. Plus, Common is the person voicing the ad. Why did you want to use your platform to go a more thought-provoking route over the funny route?
People come to the Super Bowl with a certain degree of attention that is unique. People show up for the commercials just as much for the game. To me, it feels like a waste, it feels like a shame to just purely entertain. We spend money on marketing every day of the year, and it’s about entertainment. But if you’re going to get a stage where people are listening and digesting, that moment is to start a conversation.
We did this last year. We sparked a conversation about how the pharmaceutical industry was dramatically overpricing some of the most important medicines in history, at a massive disservice to the average person. Fast forward 12 months, and the Trump administration, the push from us, regulatory policy, and the consumers that we activated have resulted in those medicines going from $1,500 to $150. It speaks to how important that stage actually is.
This year, we’re talking about the rest of the system. We’re talking about the health gap in a moment where the Trump administration and others are trying to cut down on PBMs, on insurance.
We’re in this moment when people are talking about the new ways to reach consumers, whether that’s through podcasts, Substacks, YouTube, TikTok, or Reddit. How important is the Super Bowl still?
I think it’s an important stage. The biggest brands in the world show up to say something. What they say is a reflection of what they care about. Where you put your money is a reflection of what matters, and this is a really f*cking expensive place to put your money. Let’s be honest. You’re paying for a message that you really want to be discussed. The scale of viewership and attention that people are giving to these commercials is unlike anything across the whole year of marketing.
When you’re spending this much money on a commercial, how important is the entire life cycle of this ad, the teasing, the posting afterwards on social media, making sure it has a longer half-life?
It matters just like any organized campaign is important, but honestly, I think the substance is what matters. The content of the commercial, the narrative, what it’s trying to say, how it makes people feel—to me, that’s 95 percent of it. You want to make sure you post it in the right places, tease it a little bit, and get the right organization around it, so the campaign has natural abilities to expand into different pockets of people. But I spend a lot less time thinking about that and a lot more time debating with our team the conversation we want to spark and the feeling that we want people to have when they’re engaging with the content.
When did you and your team start working on this ad?
Pretty much the day the last Super Bowl ended.
How many iterations has this gone through?
I think I’ve taken like 10 years of cumulative life off my team. I’ve got a lot of gray hair. Hundreds of iterations, dozens of different scripts. This is multiple quarters of refinement, and again, it’s because I believe strongly that it’s a unique stage to have a conversation, to spark something that is in the zeitgeist and something people actually give a shit about. This would have been the easiest thing in the world if I were to throw up a new hair loss or weight loss product and say, “Hey, come buy it here.” That’s simple. The message and the provocative nature of the creative, that’s hard work.
What was it like trying to get Common on board?
We had a chance to meet a lot of creatives. Common immediately resonated with the spirit of this message. He’s an activist himself within the Black community, within social justice, and within economic disenfranchisement. He spent his career fighting on behalf of this. This is probably going to be a really exciting start. There are a lot of things we can be doing with Common. There are a lot of things our teams are continuing to iterate on, because it’s a mission that he’s been fighting for his whole life. He feels the importance of that moment, and that it went a long way with us.
Were there any past ads or companies that you looked to as inspiration? With these sorts of bold statements, I always think of Dove, which is known for doing this during the Super Bowl, or Visa with its commercials during the Olympics.
Dove has done a great job over the years. I’ve always really been inspired by Nike’s willingness to provoke conversation and take risks. These spots don’t make you friends. The spot we launched last year pissed off some of the largest pharmaceutical industries in the world. These are some of the largest market cap companies in the world. They have endless legal budgets. They have endless regulatory budgets. You’re not up there with a clown show and a celebrity doing something silly to catch attention. You’re trying to start a hard conversation about an entrenched industry that is causing harm in the country.
I’ve always been in awe of the companies that dare to confront the truth that people don’t want to talk about or that the system doesn’t want exposed. That’s how you show purpose, by standing behind something strongly in a way that does piss people off. Because if you’re not pissing off somebody, you’re not actually representing and supporting anyone else.
What do you think you learned about making a Super Bowl commercial after last year’s spot? Was it that you wanted to piss people off?
We learned that we want to spark conversation. That commercial cost $16 million last year, and I think it was one of the biggest factors for structurally changing the access and price point of some of the most important obesity medicines. Within nine months, those medicines were being dropped drastically. That stage was a successful mechanism for change, and we’re going to continue to lean into that.
You said this year’s ad was really expensive. Last year, it was $16 million. What did this year’s ad cost?
It was about the same. Expensive.
How do you measure that sort of return, especially when you’re thinking about these bigger ideas?
It’s super hard to do, to be honest. You talk to a lot of people. You run brand studies. You run insight studies. You watch people get to know your brand. It’s a lot of qualitative intelligence. Ultimately, you’re taking a bet that it’s a message that’s important enough for your business and for people to know that you care about that. These types of commitments on these stages are not quantifiable in terms of dollars, revenue, and orders.
Do you have any advice for founders who may aspire to create their own Super Bowl ad?
Make sure your website doesn’t crash.
Did that happen last year?
No, it didn’t. But I’ve seen it happen before.
That was the horror story you prepared for?
Yeah. You need to make sure you’re ready. It’s a big stage, and that comes with a certain level of diligence and preparedness that you can’t underestimate.