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Super Bowl Ads May Be the Healthiest Yet; CoreWeave Debuts First Brand Campaign on the Olympics; You Reply on OpenAI vs. Anthropic
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Good morning. Today, urine tests and telehealth command a national spotlight once dominated by beer and junk food. How did this happen?
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Hims & Hers’ Super Bowl ad says its telehealth service can close a wealth gap in access to healthcare and wellness. Hims & Hers
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The Super Bowl this Sunday will include commercials for old standbys and new AI, the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Megan Graham reports, but also:
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Boehringer Ingelheim advocating a urine test for kidney health
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Novo Nordisk promoting Wegovy pills
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and telehealth ads from Ro and Hims & Hers.
It goes on:
“You know what these tight ends are so relaxed about?” former NFL coach Bruce Arians asks in a 60-second Super Bowl ad by Novartis. “Prostate cancer screenings.”
PepsiCo meanwhile will advertise prebiotic Poppi and Pepsi Zero Sugar, Liquid Death has a “better-for-you” energy drink to sell, Liquid I.V. needs viewers to appreciate hydration and a regional Raisin Bran spot will underline the importance of dietary fiber.
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Content from our sponsor: Deloitte
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What Others Are Reading: Top 5 Topics
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Our top stories feature insights on AI compute demand, brand building, generative AI’s impact on social media, California privacy laws, and loyalty programs. Read More
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It wasn’t so long ago that Megan wrote a Super Bowl ad roundup headlined, “The 2023 Super Bowl Ads Feature Booze, Betting and Jesus.”
AB InBev had given up alcohol exclusivity, so its Bud Light, Michelob Ultra and Busch Light ads were joined by Crown Royal, Rémy Martin and—all in one commercial—Coors Light, Miller Lite and Blue Moon. DraftKings faced off with FanDuel for gamblers. The year before had several Super Bowl ads for crypto platforms with taglines like “Fortune favors the brave.”
“He Gets Us” is still going strong as and DraftKings is back this year, but how did the overall ad mix turn into such.... gorp?
It’s partly the bad moment in crypto, weak trends in alcohol and NFL ban on prediction-market ads.
But it’s also specific to health, Meg told me when I asked her:
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With Bryan Johnson constantly in the news for his attempts to stave off aging, full-body scans getting more popular and cancer rates spiking in younger people, I’m not surprised that marketers are using this moment to signal to consumers that their longstanding products have a healthier edge than before, to urge consumers to get healthcare tests done or to show them how easy it is to get their hands on GLP-1 drugs.
It feels like consumers are genuinely receptive to that kind of messaging right now. Healthier-for-you food is now what’s being shilled by influencers, with some items so trendy you can barely find them on the shelves in New York City grocery stores. That stuff is no longer relegated to the health-food stores. It feels weird to call wellness a trend, but it feels like it’s hit new levels lately.
All that said, I’ll be honest: We’ll still be ordering pizza this Sunday.
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“If you want to show up on TikTok or Instagram, you need to plan in advance. You can’t just type something.”
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— Diane Sayler, senior director of full-funnel marketing for salty snacks at Mars Snacking, on one of many things Super Bowl advertisers need to do in order to turn success during the game into long-term results
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CoreWeave’s first brand campaign stars Chance the Rapper ruminating on AI. CoreWeave
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One of the big names in AI news lately spoke exclusively with the WSJ Leadership Institute’s Patrick Coffee about a new push to put its story in front of a wide audience. Patrick writes:
CoreWeave, the cloud provider known for buying Nvidia chips using high-interest debt and renting out access, is starting its first big brand campaign today with an ad buy including the Winter Olympics on NBC.
A minute-long spot stars Chance the Rapper meditating on the possible uses of artificial intelligence and calls CoreWeave “the essential cloud for AI.”
The most unusual thing about the Olympics run may be that CoreWeave is not a consumer-facing business, the kind you might expect to want a broad TV audience. Its clients include Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft.
CoreWeave said it wants to reach businesses beyond AI first-movers, people in the space who don’t know it and those who’ve only heard of it through its association with Nvidia.
“It really is a B2B campaign for enterprises who are looking to leverage AI,” said CMO Jean English. “When we think about, you know, who is a buyer or who is an influencer or who is a decision maker, all of those audiences and stakeholders matter to us.”
CoreWeave is still recovering from a rough end to 2025 that saw its share price fall some 45% as investors grew concerned about a potential AI bubble. Its stock has since recovered but remains well below its high.
Nvidia, which already owned nearly 7% of CoreWeave, last month announced that it would invest an additional $2 billion in the company.
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talked about the attack ads from Anthropic during an appearance on the TBPN podcast. TBPN
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Yesterday I asked how OpenAI should handle Anthropic’s Super Bowl dig over testing ads. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s long reply had veered from calling the ads funny but false to painting Anthropic as an authoritarian firm risking a “dark path.” You said there were better ways to do it:
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With humor. They could’ve shown they were above the fray and still taken full credit for the leadership position they’ve established.
—Michele Clarke
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Sit back and do nothing knowing that Anthropic will also inevitably roll out their own ads business. —David Teicher
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Less is more. The first 96 words of Altman’s post conveyed a sense of humor and a sense of purpose, which will always serve the market leader well. Everything that followed was self-serving promotional noise.
—Scott Kauffman
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OpenAI should let the free publicity roll on without interfering. OpenAI now has a de facto free Super Bowl ad. Every time Anthropic states that OpenAI is now accepting ads (good or bad), it is building awareness for OpenAI’s new advertising offering. —Greg Licciardi
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When a challenger throws a punch, a market leader has two valid moves: maintain a dignified silence or deploy a special ops creative production team for a witty, crushing counter response campaign. Instead, OpenAI wrote a manifesto. That defensive, humorless reaction signals deep insecurity. It tells me/the market they are feeling the heat.
—David Bettenhausen
Altman cut a calmer figure yesterday on the video podcast TBPN, again batting down the idea that ChatGPT would slip ads into replies, but also stepping back from the hand-to-hand and pivoting to tout his coding agent:
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“I think it’s a sideshow. People are excited for a food fight between companies, but the amazing capabilities of these models, the groundswell of excitement around Codex, that feels way more important.”
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$26 billion
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Charges that Jeep maker Stellantis said it would book, in the words of the CEO, to “reflect the cost of overestimating the pace of the energy transition that distanced us from many car buyers’ real-world needs, means and desires.”
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Russian athletes have become the Olympics’ permanent, uninvited guests. Timmy Huynh/WSJ, Stephane Mahe/Reuters, Jia Haocheng/Xinhua/Zuma, Roger Evans/Action Plus Sports/Zuma
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Russia is still banned from the Olympics—and there are Russians everywhere. [WSJ]
Chevrolet airlifted a Silverado to the top of Castleton Tower in Utah for a commercial reviving its “See the USA in Your Chevrolet” jingle for the 250th anniversary of the United States. [People]
Washington Post Publisher Will Lewis attended the NFL Honors on Thursday in San Francisco, one day after the paper cut a third of its staff and closed the newsroom’s sports department. [Nicki Jhabvala on X]
How brands are surging pop-ups into the Bay Area ahead of the Super Bowl. [Modern Retail]
Can the Super Bowl set another ratings record without the Chiefs (or Taylor Swift)? [LA Times]
MS NOW, formerly known as MSNBC, is in advanced talks with Crooked Media and others to license video podcasts for air. [Status]
Pizza Hut will close 250 restaurants in the U.S. as parent Yum! Brands continues a strategic review. [USA Today]
Tabasco’s parent company filed an infringement claim against the red-and-green bottle of Stoli’s Halapeño Pepper vodka. [Creative Bloq]
J.M. Smucker Co. hired Haleon executive Katie Williams to be its new chief marketing officer. [American City Business Journals]
Minute Maid is discontinuing the frozen juice concentrate that made its name. [USA Today]
Joanna Stern is signing off from her WSJ tech column after 12 years. Here’s what’s changed since she started. [WSJ]
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