Garden Snaps: Super Bowl Ads & The Future Of The Next 20 Minutes

If you’re still talking about the Super Bowl ads, it’s probably not because of the usual celebrity nostalgia bait. Every year, brands bring back 90s icons and sitcom reunions to keep older football fans engaged.

That’s the standard playbook.

Same with high-budget VFX—big game ads have always flexed their CGI budgets to grab attention.

But something different is happening.

A new AI style is emerging, and Instacart’s ad might be the best example. It was a rapid-fire barrage of brand mascots—Pillsbury Doughboy, the Old Spice Guy, Kool-Aid Man, Energizer Bunny, Chester Cheetah, Mr. Clean—colliding in a way that felt less like a traditional commercial and more like an algorithm-fed fever dream.