Pop quiz: Name the top Super Bowl ad from 2026.
You can't. Neither can I.
Budweiser won USA Today's 38th annual Ad Meter for Super Bowl LX (2026) with its commercial titled "American Icons". In case you forgot, like me, the ad featured the brand's signature Clydesdales alongside a soaring American bald eagle, set to the song "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
This forgettable ad is the whole story.
Brand marketing was built for a world of mass broadcast — radio, television, billboards — where a handful of vehicles reached millions of people and repetition could lodge an idea inside a skull. Volvo means safety. Coke means happiness. It worked because the environment enabled it.
That environment is gone.
The internet was not built to sell ads. It was built for people, and people have rewired the communications environment to serve themselves. What cuts through now is funny, useful, beautiful, or inspiring content — preferably all four, delivered in ways that feel personal rather than broadcast. The research backs this up. So does common sense.
Most organizations have not caught up. They still communicate like it's a Sunday church service. Single message. Single emotion. Infrequent contact. They're running a brand marketing playbook inside a direct marketing world and wondering why nothing sticks.
The founders and leaders I respect most have figured out that surprise beats consistency, emotion beats fact, and useful beats sales. They've stopped trying to hammer a single idea and started telling stories worth repeating.
Which raises the question I keep returning to: If the brands spending the most on visibility are the ones we remember least, what does that tell us about where we're actually spending our own attention and credibility?
-Marc
You can always reach me @ marc@brigadoon.live.
+ Brigadoon organizes gatherings for founders, investors, journalists, doctors, designers, architects, and civic leaders. No PowerPoints, no panels, no name tags. Just a deliberately varied group in conversation, with radical curiosity as the only agenda, and an honest acknowledgment that the ROI is unknown, and that is exactly the point. More @ www.brigadoon.live.
March 30, 2026
