What Super Bowl ads told us about consumer trends

0:00Welcome back to another episode of The Curious Consumer. I'm Nate. I'm Jenna. And today we're going to start with a discussion about the Super Bowl ads because the Super Bowl just happened. The Seahawks won. Bad Bunny also won the Super Bowl, in my opinion. In everyone's opinion. I mean, Bad Bunny was the Super Bowl for me. I actually watched no part of the Super Bowl other than a few ads and the Bad Bunny halftime show. Absolutely nothing else. Yeah. Well, also all the ads were airing like weeks before the Super Bowl actually aired. It's just kind of how it goes. I get it. I talk to my marketing friends.

0:36They put a lot of money into this, whatever. Well, that's the other piece of it is a lot of Super Bowl ads only run regionally. So if you're going to be spending millions and millions and millions of dollars on production and then airing an ad, you probably want to put it on as many channels as you can possibly get eyes. True. And we talked about a few of the ads. We did. And our perspective is we're not going to be able to tell you if an ad was good or bad. Like that's just not what we're here for. We do see the Superbowl as a really clear indication of what brands are betting on. So they're spending millions of dollars, as we've mentioned,$8 million was the average ad spent for 30 second ad during this year's Superbowl.

1:19That's a bet. And they're betting on what consumers are paying attention to and what is exciting to them. So when we were looking at the consumer brands that advertised or the super bowl we were like what are they betting on i personally loved the william shatner raisin brand ad so obviously raisin brand legacy brand been around for a while the focus of that brand is fiber and kellogg's is really trying to reframe the conversation especially around raisin brand which is a a like not a sexy brand and a brand that like Like your dad probably talked about and you're like, I'm good. I'll have my honey bunches of oats or something a little bit more fun.

2:02Maybe something with a marshmallow. But they were trying to say like, hey, look, fiber's big. We're one of the OG fiber brands like us and Metamucil. Those are the OGs. They recruited Captain Kirk, William Shatner or William Shat as the joke. The running joke in that ad was that he has very efficient bowel movements. was the underlying theme of that ad. There's nothing new about Raisin Brand. They didn't change the branding. They didn't change the product. It is exactly as is. They ran an ad betting on the fact that consumers are talking about fiber, which they are. And they're like, hey, just a reminder.

2:42We've had this thing that has always had fiber in it. And you should know about it because now you care about it. Exactly. What's cool about that is they used to probably have to do so much work to get people to think like this old school boring brand is sexy. Now, wellness culture has put in the work to tell us that fiber is sexy. So they don't actually have to do that much. I actually think that was so smart on their part. So that was a good one. But we love to talk about how people are always saying fiber is the new protein. We disagree. We think fiber and protein are hand in hand as just the two biggest things that people are looking for on a nutrition label these days.

3:21and some proof in that is that there was also a protein commercial of course there was i like this one because i love katherine han but this this one was interesting usually the oikos ads in the past have been really focused on like athletes or their partnership with the nfl or really just belaboring on the fact that like this is protein this is for athletes this one had an athlete in it i have no idea who the athlete was but i know there's an athlete in it but it was it was just them in the streets of San Francisco and Catherine Hahn had her 30 gram protein Oiko shake and was pushing a trolley that was stuck.

3:59Like it was, I mean, it was larger than life, but it was focused on just like, Hey, like a normal person. Yeah. Catherine Hahn in this case, just being like a commuter and she had the ability to save the day because she's drinking this protein beverage. What's interesting about this is that it's showing this rhetoric around protein being for the everyday person and wanting to achieve strength especially I love that it was a woman it's not just an everyday person but it's an everyday woman who is commuting she's not an athlete and she wants to be strong and I think that that messaging was spot on for the moment that we're living in so that was cool from Oikos and then we had liquid death which always has a crazy marketing budget.

4:45They do something weird. They do something crazy. This time, instead of trying to promote their water or sparkling water, they're trying to promote their new energy drinks, which have lower caffeine. And the whole thing was a surgeon recommending this lower caffeine option so that your head won't explode, so that your head won't explode with too much caffeine. So it's promoting a lower caffeine beverage from this lens of health. Right. I mean, they're making very similar claims other than the caffeine lens to what Celsius has made for many years, that this is a better few, this has vitamins, this is healthier.

5:19But we've seen some other brands launch lower caffeine, energy drinks, and even coffee skews. Huxley is one that comes to mind that we mentioned. They have 90 milligrams of caffeine. And that's their whole thing. There's a lot of people who want lower caffeine who don't want the 150 milligrams plus. They want to reduce the feeling of anxiety that they might feel when they consume a Celsius or an Alani Nu or a Ghost or a Monster or any of those. As the energy drink market continues to rise, I think there will be dedicated brands for lower caffeine, but also brands coming out with their own lower caffeinated versions of already existing energy drinks.

6:04because I think people want them. I think people don't feel like they need the 200 milligram plus of caffeine. Absolutely. And I think what's interesting here too is just the departure from typical energy drink advertising culture. Like usually Red Bull gives you wings. It's all about how you can attack your day. This was more around it being kind of the opposite. It's like, it's not going to give you too much energy. You're not going to be running around with your head cut off. It's more positioned as a wellness product, recommended by a doctor in this case is a very interesting angle to take.

6:39Yeah, the wellness positioning is different. And I remember when this launched, that stood out when they announced that they were releasing the energy drink. The press release and the way they talked about it just felt so much different than the other energy drinks. And obviously it starts with the caffeine amount, but beyond that, just the way they position it and market it is kind of the anti-energy drink energy drink yes exactly exactly so that was an interesting one unhinged per usual coming from liquid death but in a really different way than yeah they typically are unhinged and then we saw some beauty skincare ads as well one that was exciting and interesting to us was eos debuting their new fragrance line hair and body mist hair and body mist it's all hair and body mist these days.

7:31It's all hair and body mist. This one is a pistachio scent and it was a play on the show, the Netflix show, Is It Cake? So basically they're like, should we cut this woman open who's wearing this hair and body mist because she smells like cake and she might be cake. And what this tells us is just like betting on fragrance generally, like Eos is new to fragrance. Fragrance is one of the fastest growing categories or the fastest growing category and beauty and skincare right now. It makes sense that that's where they would put their dollars. The other thing that makes sense to me here is sensory marketing is just really big right now.

8:06And this idea of wanting to smell or taste like an indulgent food. I know Road Beauty does a really great job of this. A lot, they have like a cinnamon bun lip gloss and all of their marketing was this really indulgent, larger than life food imagery. So I think EOS is kind of capitalizing on that. people love this. I still think it has to do with people eating less sugar and restricting generally. They are looking for it in like cheat ways, as in I can smell like cake. I can have my lip gloss taste like cake. I really do think it's all related. And that was a bet that we saw Eos take. Yeah, that was a good ad.

8:45It was effective. The last one we talked about was Poppy. Of course, You can't not talk about poppy. So this ad they had, this was less about them being a prebiotic or even a functional beverage and just being a new soda brand that lives off vibes. That was the whole campaign. It was about vibes. And they had, they recruited Rachel Sennett and the wonderful Charlie XCX. And they had a party with a class because somebody in the classroom was drinking the poppy. And it was all about vibes. And it was very fun. And something we said was the ubiquity of this brand now. It's like not just this health and wellness product that has apple cider vinegar and helps your tummy.

9:31It's bigger than that. Oh, I think that doesn't matter anymore. I don't think that matters at all. They didn't need to make any health claims at this point. People are drinking this beverage regardless. They just wanted to be associated with the cool kids at this point. Like that's it. It's almost reaching the level of like a Coke or Pepsi where like they don't need to sell us on taste anymore because it's ubiquitous. They already know. Yeah. And they're owned by Pepsi. So. Well, exactly. And then the last interesting piece to touch on, I would add that we just did see a lot of things around health optimization and wellness culture generally.

10:09Obviously, hydration from liquid IV, GLP-1 ads. Oh, my God. Up the wazoo. Up the wazoo. Yep. Mm-hmm. Hims and Hers was a big ad. And this one was a little more interesting, I'd say, because their whole positioning was around how they make, I mean, honestly, things like GLP-1s, but other medications accessible to anyone. So their whole thing was like not just for the 1%. So seeing that within the context of all of these other ads was, I was actually really smart of them because it's like, oh, you've probably just seen ads from all of these companies that feel aspirational health optimization wellness culture to you but you don't think you can actually achieve it well you can achieve it with us so i think that was really smart thinking around not it's they like contextualize themselves within the other ads that would be playing there were there's so many like wagovi and glp once it's wild and maha and maha that maha ad was not that was not okay with Mike Tyson oh my god no the messaging was just so horrendous and offensive a wild time so that was a quick summary of the Super Bowl ads again like people are speaking about this in a much more like from a marketing lens in a way that we cannot and that's okay we just were interested in the consumer trends piece of it we're not marketing bros the other final The final thing I'll say on this is Nate and I were talking about the Super Bowl ads and I was like, it's so wild that people still don't know what CPG stands for.

11:48And that consumer goods are such an enormous industry when you look at something like the Super Bowl and how like what percentage of ad space was commanded by CPG brands. Like this is this is a huge piece of our economy. You should know what's going on. it's wild that like people don't know what cpg is and don't understand like why we love it so much at the same time it's everywhere there's so much money and effort and human endeavor that goes into this space like it's crazy and it's constantly surrounds us and it's most of the conversation even that like a lot of the more health focused ads are also like intertwined with the cpg stuff It's just everywhere.

12:35And I want more people to think about it, which is our goal. Which is our goal. Curious consumer. Love it. Love it. Let's go to our first story from the week. I would say a big one and an impactful one. Once upon a farm, IPO'd the New York Stock Exchange. This is a big deal for a lot of reasons. They IPO'd at a$724 million valuation. They raised nearly$198 million in its IPO. They surged 17 % on opening day, which sometimes opening day is a bust. So this is really promising. The reason this is such a big deal is because healthy kids' foods brands, and honestly, just food brands, rarely IPO. It is very rare that we see this.

13:26Most successful startups in this space are acquired by a massive conglomerate before they reach a public market. Like Nestle, Danone, Kraft Heinz. They're going to scoop up these brands, General Mills, before they get a chance to IPO and operate on their own. And this is a case where they did. An interesting added piece of context to this is Once Upon a Farm was co-founded by two people, Cassandra Curtis and Ari Raz. But two years into them founding this brand, they brought on two more co-founders who have a little bit more name recognition. One of them is the actress, Jennifer Garner. So that's a big one.

14:0313 going on 30, Elektra. The Jennifer. People kind of associate Once Upon a Farm with like, that is Jennifer Garner's brand. The other main co-founder that they brought on was the former CEO of Annie's. Annie's like the mac and cheese. One of the first organic kids products to really make it big. Interesting context there is they actually IPO'd, but that kind of gets pushed to the side because really shortly after they IPO'd, General Mills scooped them up. So they are not a public company actually. And after General Mills scooped them, a lot of parents have complained that the quality has gone down.

14:40The focus on organic has gone down. So it must matter a lot to this former CEO of this company to make sure that this doesn't happen to his new company, Once Upon a Farm. So his name is John Foraker, and he is kind of the other main figurehead alongside Jennifer Garner of this brand. It's a beast of a team. And now Ari Raz, for people who know, he is the CEO of Coconut Cult, another iconic CPG brand. This is really just a huge indicator of this growing space around CPG and wellness products for kids. There's a lot of really amazing brands out there alongside Once Upon a Farm that are leaning into this space of really high quality stuff for kids that honestly echoes a lot of the trajectory of adult CPG products as well that has been happening over the past few years that things have just been getting better.

15:29So like Little Spoon's another one that has just been crushing it. I wouldn't be surprised if they IPO at some point. I mean, they have so many SKUs, they have massive distribution. It's a really exciting space. They were just so ripe for disrupting this category from a timing perspective, also from an innovation perspective, they being once upon a farm, they were so innovative in how they actually envisioned the category as a whole and not just where their product fit within an existing category. And by that, I mean, they created a product that was incredibly innovative in itself. It featured HPP, which is high pressure processing, which naturally preserves refrigerated products, extends their refrigerated shelf life, and allows them to not use any added preservatives.

16:14So that was a really big deal. But they knew they had to be refrigerated to include all these clean ingredients that they want to include. And so they completely physically disrupted the kids' aisle by putting coolers into the kids' aisle of some major retailers. They were only two years old when the brand started testing coolers within Target and Kroger and they foot the bill themselves. So they paid to put coolers in Target and Kroger to sell their products, which is betting that a consumer would think to disrupt their normal behavior of reaching for a shelf stable product and go into a cooler at all.

16:53Also that the retailers would be open to changing their floor plan. it's completely changed how things are merchandised and so they started doing this themselves and they were able to prove with the most insane numbers how effective these coolers were and by that I mean they didn't just bring people who were already shopping for baby and kids food into the cooler section of that aisle they brought people new parents into the aisle completely who were never shopping in stores for their kids food they were only making it at home so they saw 10 percentage points of total category dollar growth 61 of that was incremental which means they got more shoppers to enter the category instead of other brands i don't know if i've ever seen numbers like that for any other category and so retailers love these results and then they started paying for the coolers themselves and now the brand has 2800 coolers nationwide why.

17:54That's such a cool brand story because this isn't just a cool product. It literally changed the physical setup of a grocery store. The planogram has shifted because of Once Upon a Farm. I mean, and now there's also just the refrigerated space has taken a whole new life of its own over the past few years. And probably a lot of it thanks to Once Upon a Farm being very innovative in that category. Once Upon a Farm, and I would argue the pet space, also very similar trajectory with farmer's fridge and fresh pet. I feel like really kicked off the same thing, a cooler in the pet aisle and following a very similar trajectory generally.

18:33But that was what's so cool to me about Once Upon a Farm. And there were a few other factors at play that helped them take off, help kids products take off generally. And like the kids category boom at this time. One of them is that there were some food safety crises in 2019 to around like 2024. Reports that were revealing heavy metals in baby foods concerning ingredients. So the clean label project and having a clean label certification, which Once Upon a Farm does, became really important to parents and something that they were actively seeking out. They wanted transparent brands and once upon a farm was ready to be there and prove the safety of their products on the spot i think the other big piece of it is just the timing for millennials becoming parents now gen z becoming parents though both growing up with a different understanding of organic and better for you the other interesting piece is that there are more working parents they're more highly educated.

19:32They are older for the most part now. More values-driven purchasing behavior has been reported. And a lot of them, because they're more working parents, have more time constraints and can't make the products at home. So they are looking for Better For You Kids products that they can purchase. And that probably has a lot to do with this incremental category growth that we saw as well. And now with all these other brands coming onto the market, it's just there's more education being done across the different brands to a wider um a wider selection of of consumers and now there's more money coming in here and there's more innovation so i this this whole like baby and kids product as we put in the newsletter gold rush is i think it's fascinating to me and Obviously, we're also seeing it in people's other kids' pet as well.

20:27And we're also seeing it like beyond food. We're seeing it into wellness. First day, it's got gummy vitamins, Haya. They just launched a kid's daily fiber powdered supplement. And they have a ton of other powdered supplements as well. Grooms, more gummies. this wellness world has blossomed beyond the adults and into their children as well. The Haya new daily fiber powder I thought was especially interesting because they positioned it as they put it in. It's a very cute container, actually. It is very cute. Their branding is really sweet. I love their branding. But the container is specifically designed to, they said, teach kids that gut health is a daily ritual and not a chore.

21:11And that is such adult wellness culture language that I almost feel like they just like slightly tweaked it to use the word chore, which feels a little bit more kid like. It's so interesting to see this encouragement of ritualization. I almost feel like even that word I just wouldn't have come across as a kid. And I don't think my parents were considering my daily rituals either of like maybe habits like brush your teeth, but not like the ritual of taking fiber every day. It's very health optimization, wellness culture coded for kids. Yeah. I mean, I think it was always there. Like we have Flintstone vitamins and random calcium chocolate chews and whatever, but it wasn't the same.

22:01It was, it felt like a, like a second thought, like an afterthought. It felt like an afterthought. It didn't feel like something that was deliberately inserted into our, our being us as a child's routine. Yeah. Well, getting fiber in was like my mom making sure I had an apple, which probably is the same amount of fiber as whatever is in this. Yeah. I think of course routines have always existed. Yeah. It's not that. It's the language. I'm very hung up on the semantics of daily ritual just doesn't feel like kid-focused language that I grew up in. It's for the parents. It's for the parents. It feels like influencer culture has trickled down to children, and it can be seen as concerning.

22:52It definitely can. Not that I think having added fiber is inherently a bad thing by any means, but again, kids could probably just eat some apples. The language broadly can be seen as concerning, especially with the wellness products. Well, yeah, the Once Upon a Pharma IPO, I think we're going to see a lot more in the kids space. We're really excited to see where that goes. But shall we move on to our next story? Let's do it. PepsiCo is cutting prices on some of their snack products. So Lay's, Doritos, Cheetos, and Tostito. Oh my God, they all rhyme. This is new to you. This is new to me. I never connected that.

23:33That's so funny. Yeah, they all end in tow. Insane. So they're cutting prices on all these products, and they're doing it for a couple reasons. One, the private label boom. Private label sales in the U.S. are up$9 billion year over year. They're at about$300 billion in 2025. $300 billion private label sales, with store brand sales going, jumping 30 % from 2021 to 2025, And national brands like a Pepsi are seeing slightly less growth than the private labels saw over the past year. The other side of this is Pepsi had a activist investment from Elliott Investment Management Group, a$4 billion investment from them.

24:16And they also pushed some changes as well. Pepsi raised prices around tariffs and other economic factors, but they were feeling the pressure. The, as we've said, the middle is getting squeezed. The middle is getting squeezed. Yeah. I think Pepsi thought, and this isn't just Pepsi. I think any of these like big co-brands that aren't private label and aren't premium better for you have thought that they could kind of get away with being, they still are the name brand, which is still better than private label. That's just not really pulling weight anymore. consumers understand that private label quality can be just as high as these strategic products.

24:58It's probably from that strategic brand. Exactly. And they're cheaper. So they can't compete against private label on name alone. And they aren't premium positioned or better for you. If anything, their name might be hurting them when they do try to enter the premium end of things because people have historically associated them with worse for you products. So they have been playing in a middle that just isn't existing anymore. And they have to cut prices so that they can compete against private label because it doesn't look like they're going to do a great job competing against premium. No, I mean, look, the whole discourse about the death of the middle class, this is kind of a little representative of that.

25:44And also just people are price conscious. I also think the other side of it too, is that now that startups and emerging brands are starting to take market share in aggregate, not necessarily one individual brand, but in aggregate, to your point, people also like are aware of the type of product they're buying of the quality of the brand based off of what the brand is. So like they know what Doritos is a Doritos, but they're used to a certain price around that. And they associate it with like, it's Doritos. It's a couple of bucks. It's not that expensive. And it shouldn't be. Cause like, if I'm going to spend more on a tortilla chip, I might as well upgrade to a better for you product.

26:21Exactly. From, I was going to say Siete, but that's a Pepsi brand. I was also going to say Siete. No, but that's also kind of interesting. They're eating their own market. Exactly. Exactly. Pepsi owns Siete and they know that they can't compete with Siete. Probably one of the big reasons they bought them. It's definitely an interesting time for these bigger strategics. Another example, actually is our next story, which is Coca-Cola. Wherever there's Pepsi, there's Coke news. Coca-Cola just discontinued its Minute Maid frozen juice line. I remember growing up with this. I also think about the lemonade version of it being like - The best.

27:02The best. And also like how many lemonade stands were just fueled by the Minute Maid frozen juice line? Like it's kind of sad, but there are a few different reasons this isn't playing out well. One of them is just shifting consumer preferences. Consumers don't really want high sugar content juice products. They're swapping for beverages that have benefits. And the other actually is the citrus greening disease that has been affecting Florida orange crops. This is a really widespread agricultural disaster that people are not talking about enough. Citrus could actually just go extinct in a few years if we don't start addressing this.

27:35And evidently that is one of the reasons that Minute Maid is discontinuing its frozen juice line but i know you had some nostalgic associations with minute made uh i i do um so frozen orange juice concentrate which is minute made they were a major plot point in one of my favorite movies trading places where eddie murphy and dan akroyd's character were investing in futures of frozen orange juice concentrate and also pork belly futures i was just a main plot point of that movie highly recommend that movie it's a comedy from the 80s but it's also very good at describing commodities futures, which is so interesting.

28:11The other point to this of like why they're discontinuing it, and I'm surprised it's lasted this long, actually. Frozen juice concentrate was a massive innovation in and of itself. When it came out, it was kind of revolutionary. It made fresh juice available in places where you traditionally couldn't get fresh juice or couldn't find oranges. Then we got bottling and pasteurization methods that you could put fresh squeezed juice in a plastic bottle and sell it to people. I'm surprised when that happened, that frozen concentrates still stuck around. Cause that's a major thing too, is like we have technology to not have to have frozen juice concentrate anymore.

28:49We can just bottle it, pasteurize it and we're good, which is another aspect of this that I think is really interesting of like why it's even lasted this long. That's a great point. Just access to fresh juice has completely shifted and people don't need this anymore. But I also think people aren't really seeking out juice products as much because added sugar has been demonized. And even just the natural sugar in juice products because juice lacks fiber a lot of the time because it's stripped of the nutrients when you juice it. People are more educated on that now and aren't seeking those products.