Every year, Super Bowl ads attract outsized attention — not just because of their creativity, but because of what they reveal about how marketing decisions are made at the highest level.

But before I go on any further, let me be plain  — I am not an American Football fan (you all know rugby has my heart), I do not stay up late to watch the Super Bowl, and my interest in it is purely as a CMO observing what the ads are trying to tell us.

It’s one of the rare moments when companies invest huge amounts of time, money, and effort to make a clear statement about who they are. They’re not just showing what they sell, but also how they want people to see them.

That’s why it’s interesting to look at Super Bowl ads as a group instead of focusing on each one separately. This year, what struck me most was what I saw from AI companies.

For years, B2B tech marketing — especially in AI — has leaned heavily on features. Performance. Capability. Speed. Accuracy. Benchmarks. That language has felt familiar, credible, and safe.

But watching the AI-related ads this year, it was clear something has changed. I’m not talking about the recent, admittedly entertaining public spat between OpenAI and Anthropic, even though it was revealing. Instead, I mean a deeper shift in how AI companies are choosing to present themselves.

Very few of them were really about features at all. Instead, I noticed a consistent move toward values, context, and positioning. Rather than trying to appeal to everyone, companies seemed focused on putting themselves in specific, recognisable spaces:

• Meta anchoring AI glasses in the world of athletes and physical performance
• Google’s Gemini appearing in family and everyday life moments
• Amazon positioning Alexa as practical, day-to-day help in the home

What mattered was not the technology itself, but where it fit in people’s lives. And running through all of this was a very clear thread: trust. Even the Anthropic dig at OpenAI was about trust. Every AI brand seemed to be trying to answer the same unspoken question: “Can you trust us with this?”

That makes complete sense.

AI is powerful, widespread, and becoming harder to spot. It’s appearing in work, creativity, communication, and decision-making, often faster than people are ready for. It’s natural to feel uneasy about that.

What stood out to me was how these brands chose not to address that unease with more facts or technical details. Instead, they focused on tone, familiarity, calm, and reassurance.

To me, this connects very directly to a tension I recognise well in B2B tech marketing.

As CMOs, we’re constantly balancing two pressures:

• the need to remain credible and serious to organisations buying complex products, and
• the need to make a genuine human connection with the people inside those organisations.

The Super Bowl ads seemed to signal that the focus is shifting. It’s moving away from what the technology can do and toward what it means to work with the company behind it.

This isn’t about making things fluffy or overly consumer-focused. It’s about recognising that trust, values, and context are now part of the buying decision.

For me, that’s the most important takeaway, and it’s something I’ve spent much of my career discussing. I’ve worked to help businesses, especially marketers, see the difference between leading with features and leading with value. The tech industry has often struggled with this, even as it becomes more important for building trust.

The Super Bowl doesn’t just showcase creativity. It sets tone. This year, the message from AI companies was clear: features might get attention, but values are what build trust.

What this shift means for marketing teams – how CMOs have handled AI so far, why productivity was the first safe step, and why the next phase feels both harder and more exciting – is another story, but it’s closely related. I’ll explore that next.

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