While the marketing industry once again became fixated on the ads during the recent Super Bowl, marketers are missing a trick by overlooking the far richer cultural, strategic and psychological narratives unfolding before their very eyes, writes Jonny Boyle.
Every February, the marcomms industry performs its own ritual around the Super Bowl. Within hours of the final whistle, the trade press fills with rankings of the “best” ads, breakdowns of media spend, performance metrics, earned impressions, and breathless declarations of which brand “won the night.”
But for an industry that prides itself on insight, we do not ask nearly enough difficult questions.
What does this spectacle actually reveal about culture? About leadership? About identity and collective narrative?
Focusing on the ads alone feels like watching fireflies and missing the bonfire.
This year’s Super Bowl offered far richer material if we were willing to look beyond the many, many, many spots that filled the gaps in the on-field entertainment.
Stacking Wins and Chasing Edges
Consider the meteoric rise of the Seattle Seahawks under head coach Mike Macdonald. The easy review centers on play calls, savant like game management, and that “Darkside” defense. The deeper story is about process and psychological architecture.
Macdonald has now popularized the philosophy of “stacking wins”; inching forward by building sequential, compounding achievements that create momentum and confidence over time. It is not about sporadic brilliance. It is about culture creation: a steady collection of small victories that cohere into championship performance.
Central to this approach is the idea of chasing edges. Not gimmicks, not headline grabbing moments, but the relentless pursuit of small, often invisible advantages wherever they can be found. Preparation edges. Emotional edges. Communication edges. Recovery edges. Over time, those edges compound. They become culture. And culture becomes competitive advantage. Marginal Gains 2.0.
In an era defined by short attention spans and instant gratification, impulses that drive much of modern advertising strategy, there is a lesson here the brand industry should heed. Great outcomes are rarely the result of flash alone. They come from systems, consistency, cultural clarity, and the discipline to balance long term identity with short term execution.
Imagine if campaigns were treated less like lottery tickets and more like culture building exercises. Imagine if brands obsessed over stacking micro wins with audiences instead of chasing a single viral spike during the third quarter.
Halftime as Cultural Palimpsest
Then there was the halftime show.
Bad Bunny delivered something that defied the standard recap formula of surprise guests and setlist highlights. It was a layered performance, dense with symbolism, history, and identity, yet accessible enough to be enjoyed without decoding a single reference.
He managed to say an extraordinary amount without overt declaration. Through staging, choreography, costume, language shifts, and visual cues, the performance held multiple meanings simultaneously: celebration and critique, pride and provocation, spectacle and statement.
You could watch it casually and be entertained.
You could watch it closely and uncover commentary on heritage, colonial legacy, and cultural power.
That duality is precisely what the best creative work achieves. It trusts the audience. It does not flatten complexity.
Yet, the bulk of industry attention remains fixed on which ad generated the most likes or which brand secured the priciest airtime.
If the marketing and communications industry truly wants to elevate its strategic ambition, it must ask tougher questions.
The ads are part of the story.
They are not the whole story.
And too often these days, marketers are only looking at part of the story.
Jonny Boyle is Executive Creative Director with experiential agency, FUEL.
