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Ro CEO Shows His Super Bowl Math; Papa John’s Brings Pan Pizza to a Knife Fight; Aronofsky Re-Generates 1776; What CEOs Said About Minneapolis
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Good morning. Today, Ro explains why it was time to buy a Super Bowl ad; a swanky pizza tasting belies brutal competition in the category; Salesforce sponsors a new techy new telling of the American Revolution; and “de-escalation” is CEOs’ word of the week.
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Serena Williams will talk up GLP-1s for telehealth firm Ro, which is making its first appearance on TV’s most expensive night. Ro
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The WSJ Leadership Institute’s Katie Deighton writes for the newsletter:
The CEO of first-time Super Bowl advertiser Ro yesterday left the cave of silence and trade secrecy where executives usually hide from questions about the game’s astronomical ad prices.
In a 5,000-word blog post, Zach Reitano explained why his telehealth company is making the investment and how much it really costs.
The air time alone this year commanded a minimum $233,000 per second, Reitano calculated.
He also highlighted a few Super Bowl advertising nuances, such as:
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He wouldn’t have gotten a “bulk discount” for buying 60 seconds instead of 30. There’s too much demand for that.
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And the right to shell out for a Super Bowl slot often requires committing to spending an equivalent amount with the network on ads to run later in the calendar.
Ro as a result will also “have an advertising presence within the 2026 Winter Olympics on NBC,” Reitano said.
All things considered—air time but also production, talent and the additional media spending—a Super Bowl berth likely costs most advertisers somewhere in the range of $16 million to $29 million dollars in 2026, according to Reitano.
Ro is making the leap to take advantage of the new Wegovy pill, the rapid drop in GLP-1 prices and its relationship with Serena Williams, who began appearing in the firm’s ads last summer.
Katie asked why Reitano decided to write his opus. His answer:
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There’s a perception that Super Bowl ads are inherently extravagant or irrational. When you run the numbers, the investment makes sense. There is fixed downside with uncapped upside.
We wanted to explain how we thought about the economics and share a framework so other founders and operators can decide when—and if—it makes sense for them.
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Content from our sponsor: Deloitte
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Global Economic Outlook: The 2026 Forecast for More Than 25 Countries
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A series of economic reports examines key trends shaping growth outlooks for countries around the globe. Read More
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Eat the Rich: Ro rival Hims & Hers Health will also advertise during the Super Bowl, this time reprising a manifesto from last year’s commercial in the game but escalating the rhetoric a bit, Business Insider reports.
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The 2025 Hims & Hers ad was all about a broken system, denouncing meds “priced for profits, not patients.” This time the subject is “rich people,” including a Jeff Bezos lookalike who celebrates a rocketship ride, who use their money to live longer.
Don’t Bet on It: If I still gambled, I would have bet that a prediction market operator like Kalshi or Polymarket would make a Super Bowl debut this year. I would have lost:
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Prediction markets are among the list of “prohibited categories” for the Super Bowl, a source familiar with the matter tells Front Office Sports. Prediction-market commercials have not been allowed on NFL broadcasts all season; they were added to the list of categories the NFL forbids before the kickoff of the 2025 season, the source says.
Although the list of prohibited categories is not public, it’s known to include tobacco, pornography, firearms, and other controversial subjects.
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This is why I don’t bet any more.
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Papa John’s presents its new pan pizza to influencers and media. Megan Graham
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The WSJ Leadership Institute’s Megan Graham writes:
Big Pizza has seen better days: Sales growth at pizza restaurants has lagged other fast food for years, price wars are dragging on and GLP-1s threaten to turn many diners’ appetites in other directions.
Papa John’s is fighting for choosier consumers by trying to step up its menu offerings and value, which is how I wound up sampling its revived pan pizza on Wednesday night in an omakase room at the members-only Flyfish Club in New York City.
The pizza, which Papa John’s sold in a previous iteration until 2019, has a thick crust, cheese and garlic sauce baked into the bottom and a blend of six cheeses on top. (I liked it even more after I accidentally spilled an entire tub of garlic sauce on it.)
Just outside the tasting room, other invited media and influencers sipped on tomato, basil and parmigiano reggiano-infused cocktails amid floral arrangements decorated with tomatoes.
The invitations were part of a rollout designed to get attention just before the Super Bowl and another day that Papa John’s CMO Jenna Bromberg told me was big for pizza sales: Valentine’s Day, when she said many parents order pizzas for their babysitters.
“We wanted to make sure we had it kind of locked and loaded before we got into those major days, because we want as many consumers to try as possible,” Bromberg said.
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A new series about the Revolutionary War is part of director Darren Aronofsky’s project to make AI a tool for filmmakers. Primordial Soup
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Darren Aronofsky’s AI studio Primordial Soup has introduced an AI-generated short-form series about the American Revolution, “On This Day... 1776,” sponsored by Salesforce.
Google’s DeepMind AI lab, which announced a partnership with Primordial Soup last year, also gets a shout in the end cards.
You can see its renditions of King George III and George Washington (voiced by SAG actors) in the first episode, “January 1: The Flag,” here.
Observers like the Hollywood Reporter seem intrigued, but “On This Day” isn’t landing with everyone. Here’s Kotaku:
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It feels like a test of whether the guiding hand of one of Hollywood’s biggest auteurs can bend an ugly and fiddly plagiarism machine to his own creative ends and produce something that doesn’t make you want to hurl. I don’t think it will be controversial to say it fails spectacularly.
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An analysis of 10 CEO statements on events in Minnesota shows terms that were repeated and avoided. Source: WSJ analysis of public statements
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CEOs who spoke up after the federal immigration crackdown led to two deadly shootings in Minneapolis nonetheless spoke carefully—and in largely the same terms.
“De-escalation” was suddenly the buzzword of the crisis, The Wall Street Journal’s Hanna Krueger writes:
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It was first expressed in a letter signed by 60 leaders of Minnesota companies, including Target, 3M and General Mills, that was published the day after federal agents fatally shot protester Alex Pretti.
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Nine out of ten subsequent CEO statements called for “de-escalation.” One mentioned ICE; none said “immigration,” “Alex Pretti” or “Renee Good.”
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The term “de-escalation” has become the default because “it’s a reputational risk-management term that sounds humane while remaining politically noncommittal,” said Michael Santoro, a business ethicist and professor at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.
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Another CEO could hardly avoid naming ICE:
Some protestors are targeting the social media monitoring and marketing firm Hootsuite over its work with ICE. In a letter on Hootsuite’s website, CEO Irina Novoselsky took a strong position on the Minneapolis operation:
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What we are watching unfold right now is wrong.
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But Novoselsky said the company’s tech doesn’t help ICE target people—
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Our use-case with ICE does not include tracking or surveillance of individuals using our tools.
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—and that helping ICE’s public affairs office listen to social media is a public good:
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Today more than ever, organizations need to hear more from the public, not less.
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A protest is still scheduled for Friday afternoon outside Hootsuite headquarters in Vancouver.
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“Employees are expected to dine at a Cracker Barrel store for all or the majority of meals while traveling, whenever practical based on location and schedule.”
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— A Cracker Barrel directive to staff highlighting a new era of “travelscrimping” as companies tighten budgets
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Don Lemon was covering the Grammy Awards when federal agents took him into custody, his lawyer said. Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
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Federal agents arrested former CNN anchor Don Lemon, his lawyer said, a week after a magistrate judge declined to sign off on a complaint charging him over his involvement in an anti-immigration enforcement protest in Minnesota. [WSJ]
How former Hollywood power player Brett Ratner is using “Melania” to try to make a comeback. [WSJ]
Brands marketing “traditional Chinese medicine” products are seizing TikTok’s recent embrace of “Chinese baddie” culture. [Glossy]
How regulatory fines do (or more precisely, don’t) stack up against tech companies’ cash flow. [Digiday]
X is releasing a new set of tools to convince more creators and advertisers to return. [Adweek]
Starbucks’ changes to its loyalty program—including three new levels of membership based on spending—owe a big debt to airlines’ longtime strategy. [Restaurant Business]
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