Brand Bowl brings Gen Z insights to Super Bowl ads

Ads that featured strong, positive emotions and uplifting messages were among those that received the highest scores from the Gen Z focus group participating in the 7th annual Brand Bowl, a collaboration among the College of Journalism and Communication’s Department of Advertising, the Atlas Lab, and the Ad Society student organization.

Pfizer’s “Knock Out Cancer,” the NFL’s “I Am Somebody,” and Nike’s “So Win” ads received the top average scores of 8.4 or higher (out of 10 possible points), while a pair of Tubi ads and a bizarre Coffee-Mate ad received the lowest scores at 3.5 or lower.

A group of 40 student focus group participants rated more than 60 ads as they appeared in real-time during Super Bowl LIX, while a team of students from the Atlas Lab used Talkwalker, a social media listening tool, to find information about the social media reactions to each ad. A white paper summarizing their results is available here.