Ad spot: Anthropic, Manscaped, Pringles and more

The week underlined Super Bowl advertising’s playbook, which included emotion, absurdity or rivalry, with Silicon Valley’s AI race surfacing beneath the ads.

09 Feb 2026 15:26 IST

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In the last week’s ad campaigns, one event dominated the conversation: the Super Bowl. America's sporting stage once again proved to be the marquee moment for brands willing to spend large sums on 30 seconds of airtime, and this year's batch delivered everything from singing hairballs to edible romantic partners.

These brands were also accompanied by an unexpected source. Anthropic, the AI startup behind Claude, used the Super Bowl stage not only to celebrate its own product, but to dig a shot at competitors.

Its four-part campaign imagined a dystopian future where AI conversations are interrupted by jarring product placements, a thinly veiled critique of OpenAI's recent decision to introduce ads into ChatGPT.

The films followed users seeking professional advice from therapists and lawyers, only to have their sessions derailed by invasive marketing. No competitor was named directly, but the message landed with precision.

Elsewhere on Super Bowl week, the ads leaned into spectacle and humour. MANSCAPED introduced its national audience to a chorus of grotesque hairball puppets mourning their demise in an operatic power ballad, signalling the brand's evolution from niche disruptor to mass-market player.

Pringles returned for its ninth consecutive Super Bowl appearance with Sabrina Carpenter constructing her ideal man, literally, out of stackable crisps, only for him to meet a tragic end at the hands of her adoring fans.

The week reinforced a familiar truth about Super Bowl advertising: brands either go big on emotion, bigger on absurdity, or sharpest on competition. This year delivered all three, with Silicon Valley's AI rivalry emerging as the subplot beneath the commercial breaks.

Let us take a look at all the ads that stood out this week.