The Best Ads from American Football's Big Game in the 2020s, According to System1

Jan. 13, 2026

System1, The Creative Effectiveness Platform, today released the American Football Big Game "Hall of Fame," a ranking of consumers’ favourite Big Game ads of the 2020s, based on emotional response data for 425 ads from 60,000+ people. System1 also reveals key themes from top performers like Doritos, Jeep and the NFL, unlocking creative effectiveness insights for brands that want to win on advertising’s biggest stage.

Using its Test Your Ad Competitive Edge platform, System1 tests every Big Game ad with consumers. The testing predicts long-term growth potential (Star Rating) and short-term sales potential (Spike Rating) based on how people feel when watching the creative, how intense these emotions are and how quickly and well the brand is correctly identified by viewers.

In 2025, Big Game ads averaged 3.0 Stars out of a maximum 5.9 Stars, slightly higher than the 2.3-Star average for all U.S. advertising. The average for the top-performing Big Game ads from the past six years far exceeds these metrics, securing 5.2 Stars or ‘Exceptional’ long-term growth potential. They accomplish this by leaning into storytelling, humour, cultural references and more.

America’s Favourite Ads

The top Big Game ads of the 2020s are ranked according to Star Rating (predicted long-term growth potential), with Spike Rating (predicted short-term sales potential) as the tie-breaker for ads with the same Star Rating.

• Lay’s, “Little Farmer” (2025) — 5.9 Stars
• NFL, “Somebody I It Takes All of Us” (2025) — 5.6 Stars
• Huggies, “Welcome to the World, Baby” (2021) — 5.4 Stars
• Disney, “Disney100 Special Look” (2023) — 5.3 Stars
• Jeep, “Groundhog Day” (2020) — 5.2 Stars
• WeatherTech, “Whatever Comes Your Way” (2025) — 5.2 Stars
• Doritos, “Cool Ranch” (2020) — 5.1 Stars
• Samuel Adams, “Boston Dynamics” (2022) — 4.9 Stars
• Doritos, “Push It” (2022) — 4.9 Stars
• NFL, “Flag 50” (2025) — 4.9 Stars

The Effectiveness Playbook

The top-performing ads showcase best practices for driving emotional engagement, attention and distinctiveness, which support commercial impact. 

• Tell a Story — A narrative with a clear beginning, middle and end, characters who interact with one another and emotional peaks and valleys are effectiveness gold. Whether it’s Lay’s story of a young girl growing her very own potato to Jeep’s reimagining of Groundhog Day or Samuel Adams’ after-hours party with the Boston Dynamics robots, there are many ways for advertisers to tell a story that puts their brand at the centre of it. Ads can introduce moments of tension or sadness, so long as they are resolved and replaced with positive emotion by the end.  
• Make Your Audience Laugh — Amusement is one of the most powerful types of happiness, so making people laugh goes a long way for effectiveness. WeatherTech flipped the script by putting daredevil grannies in the driver’s seat and Doritos also delivered laughs by showing jungle animals singing and dancing. Don’t be afraid to push boundaries through over-the-top, slapstick humour that surprises and delights.
• Leverage Distinctive Assets — In 2025, average brand recall across Big Game ads was 79%, meaning one in five viewers couldn’t confidently tell you which brand an ad was for. Remember that familiarity breeds contentment. Disney leans into its recognizable IP for its ad celebrating 100 years while Samuel Adams continually features its fluent device ‘Your Cousin from Boston.’ Make your brand known, whether it’s through recurring celebrities or characters like Cousin or the Budweiser Clydesdales, a sonic device or jingle, or easy-to-distinguish brand colours and fonts. This ensures you make the most of your high-performing creative.
• A Celebrity Isn’t a Requirement — Many of consumers’ favourite Big Game ads lack one of the most commonly used creative routes: celebrities. While celebrities can entertain, they work best when they’re consistently used over the long term, like T. Mobile’s dynamic duo of Zach Braff and Donald Faison. More often than not, strong narratives that elicit intense, positive emotions win over flashy celebrity appearances that can distract from the brand and message.
• Consider (Relevant) Cultural References — Widely known cultural references deliver nostalgia for this mass audience event, which drives positive feeling. The NFL’s “Flag 50” spot drew upon Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Jeep brought Bill Murray back for a Groundhog Day redo and Doritos’ “Cool Ranch” capitalized on the popularity of Lil Nas X’s chart-topping hit “Old Town Road.” Each made sure the cultural references aligned with their brand: high school served as the backdrop to a flag football match for the NFL; Bill Murray (happily) relived the same day again and again, driving in his Jeep; and Doritos’ ranch-flavoured crisps got a western-inspired spot complete with the wildly popular country rapper.

Jon Evans, Chief Customer Officer at System1 and host of the Uncensored CMO podcast said:

“The Big Game often brings some of the year’s most entertaining, funny and memorable creative. Brands that apply the learnings around storytelling, humour, distinctive assets and cultural references will not only have an ad deserving of the ‘Hall of Fame’ but one that can support sales and profit gain in the months and years following game night.”