By Alejandro Oszust, Head of Strategy at Orci
Bear with me here—Bad Bunny delivered the best ad of the Super Bowl. Not the best halftime show (who cares about that ranking?), but the best ad.
Why?
Because his show was conceptual from beginning to end. Something that many agencies—and even more clients, for sure—have forgotten. They’re too busy playing celebrity arms races with their competitors and cranking out dad jokes masquerading as 30-second scripts that say absolutely nothing.
Bad Bunny’s show centered on one concept: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” And he delivered it in a genuinely creative way.
Throughout the 13-minute performance, you caught Latino insight after Latino insight—the kid sleeping across two chairs, the domino, the boxers, the vendors… all the cultural cues about how Hispanics live, and of course the party vibe that, well, is just our lifestyle.
Following Advertising 101 (show your brand in the first three seconds), the show opened with “qué rico es ser latino.” Boom. Right and center. This is about being Latino.
Then, like every other Super Bowl ad, he brought out celebrities to dance in his iconic “casita.” But unlike most of Sunday’s spots, the celebrities actually served a purpose: we are here, we are together and we will continue to have fun. They weren’t just stupid attention grabbers. In fact, many people didn’t even recognize some of them because the camera was fast.
In fact, Bad Bunny gave more screen time to Toñita, the owner of a social club in New York, than to Pedro Pascal.
Another lesson from Bad Bunny that marketers seem hellbent on ignoring: keep it real. And he went all-in, celebrating an actual wedding—the ultimate commitment to love, which was, you know, the entire concept at the core of his message.
To close it out and hammer the message home, Bad Bunny yelled “God bless America”—meaning all the countries on our continent, including the U.S.—before taking the party elsewhere with “DtMF.”
Think I’m being too Latino or exaggerating? Consider this: after Bad Bunny’s performance ended, the Super Bowl lost 1.6 million viewers. That means this year, a lot of people weren’t sticking around for celebrities cracking corny jokes or even for the two teams that should’ve been the main event (?). Those 1.6 million viewers were only waiting for those 13 minutes. Which also means if your spot ran after halftime, congrats—you may have just lit a pile of money on fire.
I don’t expect you to agree with me about the Bad Bunny show. Honestly, I’m not even a huge fan of his. But I am a huge fan of good communication—the kind that feels real, with a core conceptual message that connects the brand to its audience and gets real people (not just us ad nerds) talking about it.
And that’s something the industry desperately needs to remember.
