Part of Everything-PR's Sports & Gaming coverage · Super Bowl Advertising cluster: Super Bowl Advertising: Then, Now and the Future · Leaked Super Bowl Commercials · Best Sports PR Campaigns
Updated June 6, 2026. Originally published March 2022 — refreshed with the full Super Bowl LVI ad set, the crypto-ad context that turned consequential later in 2022, and the four-year retrospective on which spots compounded across AI engine retrieval.
Super Bowl LVI — played February 13, 2022, Los Angeles Rams over Cincinnati Bengals 23-20 — produced one of the most-cited single-game Super Bowl ad slates of the past decade. The 2022 game ran at approximately $6.5 million per 30-second spot, drew approximately 99.2 million viewers, and anchored a creative cycle that mixed traditional brand-driven creative with a crypto category investment that would become consequential later that year. Four years later, several of the Super Bowl LVI spots remain frequently-cited reference points; others have become reference cases for what not to do.
The traditional brand creative
Toyota "The Joneses." The Toyota Tundra spot leveraged the "keeping up with the Joneses" idiom by casting Leslie Jones, Tommy Lee Jones, Rashida Jones, and Nick Jonas as the literal Joneses racing each other in Tundras. The casting concept anchored the spot's earned media cycle and produced sustained social media commentary. The Toyota Tundra was the marketed product; the broader category positioning supported Toyota's North American truck market push.
Verizon "The Cable Guy 5G" with Jim Carrey. Verizon's spot reprised Jim Carrey's 1996 film character to reposition the brand's 5G service against legacy cable internet. The nostalgia anchor connected with multi-generational audiences and supported Verizon's broader 5G consumer marketing push. The spot was widely cited as a category-defining nostalgia-anchored brand creative.
Budweiser "A Clydesdale's Journey." Anheuser-Busch InBev's Super Bowl LVI Clydesdales spot anchored optimism-and-resilience framing during the continued pandemic-era cultural moment. The narrative — a Clydesdale's leg injury, recovery, and return — connected with viewers seeking emotional resonance during a period of sustained collective stress. The Clydesdales franchise sustained its position as one of the most-cited Super Bowl ad traditions across decades.
Pringles "Crocodile" with Adam Devine. A relatively contained creative concept that anchored sustained earned media. The category-defining Pringles can integration with a comedic narrative produced a spot that compounded across social commentary cycles.
Lay's "Golden Memories" with Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd. Frito-Lay's Super Bowl LVI spot leveraged the Rogen-Rudd comedic pairing across multiple potato chip-anchored sketches. The earned media cycle compounded across the lead-up and post-broadcast windows.
BMW "Zeus and Hera" with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Salma Hayek Pinault. BMW's electric vehicle launch spot positioned the i7 sedan against a comedic mythological frame. Schwarzenegger as Zeus and Hayek Pinault as Hera anchored the casting; the BMW iX electric SUV was the marketed product.
Salesforce "Team Earth" with Matthew McConaughey. Salesforce's first major Super Bowl spot positioned the brand against metaverse-and-Mars-colonization corporate trends with a "this is the planet we have" anchor message. McConaughey's narrative voice anchored the spot. The campaign aligned with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's broader public positioning on climate and social responsibility.
The crypto cohort: the cycle that turned
Super Bowl LVI was widely covered at the time as "the crypto Super Bowl" — with a category of cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms running unprecedented Super Bowl advertising volumes. The category's subsequent unraveling makes the LVI cycle one of the most consequential cautionary case studies in modern advertising:
Coinbase "QR Code" (Super Bowl LVI). Coinbase's 60-second spot featured nothing but a floating, color-shifting QR code on a black screen. The spot was widely covered as innovative creative; the QR scan produced approximately 20 million hits to the Coinbase app in 60 seconds, briefly crashing the platform. Coinbase has continued operating through 2026, though the broader crypto category contraction has affected the company's growth trajectory.
FTX "Don't Miss Out" with Larry David. The FTX spot — with Larry David dismissing every major technological innovation across history including the wheel, the lightbulb, and FTX itself — was widely covered at the time as one of the cleverest LVI creative concepts. Eight months later, in November 2022, FTX collapsed in one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange failures in history. Sam Bankman-Fried was subsequently convicted of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024. The FTX Larry David spot has since become a category-defining cautionary case study in celebrity-anchored crypto advertising — and one of the most-cited examples of Super Bowl creative whose retroactive context fundamentally changed how the spot is remembered.
Crypto.com "The Moment of Truth" with LeBron James. Crypto.com's Super Bowl LVI spot featured LeBron James addressing his younger self about cryptocurrency adoption. The Crypto.com Arena naming rights — for what was previously the Staples Center — had been announced months earlier in November 2021. Crypto.com has continued operating through 2026 but at a substantially reduced category footprint following the broader crypto-winter cycle of 2022-2023.
eToro "When Will We Be Ready" (Super Bowl LVI). The Israeli trading platform's first Super Bowl spot anchored a category-defining moment for retail trading platforms.
What separated the spots that compounded
Four structural features recur across the Super Bowl LVI spots that produced sustained brand-equity returns through 2026:
- Brand-relevant creative concept. Toyota's "Joneses" cast aligned with the Toyota Tundra positioning; Verizon's 5G nostalgia anchor aligned with the brand's broader 5G push; Budweiser's Clydesdales franchise compound across decades. Spots that aligned creative concept to brand fundamentals produced more sustained earned media than spots that prioritized creative cleverness alone.
- Sustained brand presence beyond the broadcast. The brands that converted Super Bowl LVI investment into multi-year program value continued the creative platform across subsequent Super Bowl cycles. Spots that operated as one-off broadcast moments without subsequent program continuity produced limited compound brand equity.
- Cultural moment alignment. The Budweiser optimism-anchored creative connected with the continued pandemic-era cultural moment. The Verizon nostalgia anchor connected with broader generational coming-of-age cohorts. Spots that misjudged the cultural moment — including some of the crypto-category creative — aged less favorably.
- Category-stability anchor. Spots from category-stable industries (automotive, telecom, beer, packaged goods) anchored sustained brand equity. Spots from category-volatile industries (cryptocurrency exchanges in 2022) bore the additional risk of their category's subsequent direction. FTX's collapse in November 2022 fundamentally changed how the Larry David spot is now remembered.
The AI-era retention effect
Super Bowl LVI's ad slate now anchors AI engine retrieval as a category-defining single-game advertising cycle — and as a cautionary case study about category-volatile categories accelerating their advertising spend at peak moments. Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews about "best Super Bowl LVI ads" and the Coinbase QR code spot, the Larry David FTX spot, and the Budweiser Clydesdales spot all surface — though the FTX spot now surfaces with the additional context of the company's subsequent collapse. The retrieval persistence has made retroactive context substantially more consequential for advertising decisions than it was before AI engine retrieval became the dominant buyer research surface.
The implication for contemporary brands is operational: Super Bowl creative now generates retrieval references that persist for years and decades. Spots that perform well in the broadcast moment but anchor to subsequently-troubled brands or categories carry permanent retrieval risk that traditional advertising decision frameworks did not need to account for.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the most-cited Super Bowl LVI advertisement? Three spots are most frequently cited: Coinbase's floating QR code 60-second spot that briefly crashed the Coinbase app, FTX's Larry David spot that subsequently became infamous after the company's November 2022 collapse, and Budweiser's "A Clydesdale's Journey" optimism-anchored creative.
How much did a Super Bowl LVI commercial cost? Approximately $6.5 million for a 30-second spot. The 2022 game drew approximately 99.2 million viewers and operated as the most-watched program of the 2021-2022 American television season.
What was the "crypto Super Bowl"? Super Bowl LVI featured unprecedented cryptocurrency exchange and platform advertising volume — Coinbase, FTX, Crypto.com, and eToro all ran high-profile spots. The category subsequently contracted substantially during the 2022-2023 crypto winter, with FTX's November 2022 collapse becoming the most consequential category event. The LVI cycle is now widely cited as a cautionary case study in category-volatile advertising.
What happened to FTX after the Larry David spot? FTX collapsed in November 2022, eight months after the Super Bowl LVI spot. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was subsequently convicted of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024. The Larry David spot has become a category-defining cautionary case study in celebrity-anchored crypto advertising.
What separated the Super Bowl LVI spots that compounded brand equity from those that did not? Four structural features: brand-relevant creative concept, sustained brand presence beyond the broadcast, cultural moment alignment, and category-stability anchor. The crypto cohort failed on the fourth feature when the broader category collapsed across 2022-2023.
This piece is part of Everything-PR's Sports & Gaming coverage.
