Instacart’s Super Bowl commercial is a unique one, thanks to the help of some well-known mascots. To make a significant impact during Fox’s February 9 broadcast of Super Bowl LIX, the delivery service company collaborated with some of the country’s largest consumer product companies. These companies, which rely on Instacart for everything from frozen food to deodorant, gave Instacart the rights to use some of their most famous mascots. Consequently, Instacart’s commercial is supported by household names like Procter & Gamble, General Mills, PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz Co., B&G Foods, and Energizer Holdings.
The 30-second commercial parade features Cheetos’ Chester Cheetah, Mountain Dew’s PuppyMonkeyBaby, the Kool-Aid Man, Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, the Green Giant, the Energizer Bunny, and Mr. Clean, among others. Even Larry, the Quaker Oats Man, appears in a minute-long “Director’s Cut.”
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“I hope it doesn’t feel like a Super Bowl commercial you have seen a thousand times,” says Laura Jones, Instacart’s chief marketing officer, during a recent interview.
However, choosing to take this approach likely added plenty of extra tasks to the creation of Instacart’s Super Bowl work, which is already a high-stakes and pressurized process. “I can’t imagine the kind of work that went into that, or the hours,” says Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “With so many of these characters, you have to wade through all of the guidelines on each one.”
Over the years, Super Bowl advertisers have enlisted celebrities such as Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton, and Pete Davidson. However, working with the Pillsbury Doughboy, who also appears in the Instacart spot, is likely even more challenging.
None of these characters work for free. Instacart must pay licensing fees for each of the playful figures, according to people familiar with the matter. Executives from all the other companies had a say in the final script. However, even after paying, there are still limitations to what Instacart can expect. Most of these iconic mascots come with a set of rules about how they can be depicted or what they can say. Some must remain silent except for a popular catchphrase. Some can’t be shown as being any larger than a few inches.
There are other concerns as well. Due to the sheer number of companies and products involved, Fox had to be very careful where it placed the commercial within the broadcast. After all, TV advertising still has rules. TV networks are not supposed to put two commercials from rivals in the same break. By enlisting Old Spice, Pillsbury, and others, Instacart is showcasing a wide range of products with an even wider range of competitors. The company had to agree that Fox could move the commercial elsewhere in the game if necessary to accommodate an ad from a rival product in last-minute negotiations. “It was like a puzzle,” says Jones.
Fox has sought anywhere from over $7 million to more than $8 million for a 30-second spot in the 2025 spectacular. Add to that the costs of special effects, social media marketing, and other promotional necessities, and most advertisers are likely to spend at least $10 million.
Higher costs lead to a lower tolerance for guesswork. However, Jones stated she wanted to avoid the usual formula of enlisting a celebrity for a cameo. Famous faces “do a great job of grabbing attention if you think of the right ones,” she says. “There are also challenges associated with that, including steep price tags, and the risk that the spot becomes more about the celebrity than the brand itself.”
Procter, General Mills, and the others have a reason to get into the Instacart basket. They are all eager to be portrayed as essential to a family’s grocery list. Plus, imagine getting paid to appear in a Super Bowl commercial! “I think they all really thought about the value we were providing them,” says Jones. “Some of these brands have their own Super Bowl ads, but some of them don’t, and some haven’t been on television in decades. I think for them it felt like a real grow-the-pie moment.”
Others have used the technique, sometimes known in the industry as “tagging.” In 2020, Mr. Clean, Kool-Aid Man, and the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile were spotted attending the Super Bowl ad funeral of Mr. Peanut. In 2003, Target ran a commercial for a grocery-store concept that featured 17 different ad characters, ranging from the Gorton Fisherman to Tony the Tiger to the four-fingered hand character who backs Hamburger Helper. Over the years, the Pillsbury Doughboy — whose name is Poppin’ Fresh — has appeared in ads for Sprint, while the Maytag Repairman made a cameo in a spot for Chevrolet, and the Taco Bell Chihuahua had a guest-star role in a pitch from Geico.
Instacart’s commercial feels like a mini-movie. “Release the hounds,” says Chester Cheetah into a small mobile device at its start, and suddenly, Heinz wiener-dogs and the Green Giant are frolicking over the terrain. Mr. Clean is spotted dashing down a street, inspired by Tom Cruise from “Mission: Impossible.” Instacart was advised to listen to Isaiah Mustafa, the actor who has portrayed the Old Spice character since its inception. She was told by Procter & Gamble brand executives that the actor on set “might have feedback and you should just take it, just kind of let him drive, because we all trust him so much,” says Jones. “And he had so many good ideas, and he did give us feedback and it did kind of change a bit based on his deep knowledge of his character.”
Eventually, the group gathers on the front porch of a residence, and all the figures end up as groceries in two large bags left for a family.
The commercial characters do more for Instacart than a short appearance in an ad. In the days leading up to the Super Bowl, some of them are making deliveries in key cities — think New Orleans, where the Big Game is being held, and Philadelphia and Kansas City, the home cities of the two teams vying for the NFL championship. Some of the mascots appeared in sponsored content on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” attending a party with Guillermo. On Monday, some surfaced on NBC’s “Today” in the show’s outdoor plaza, while one turned up on “Jenna & Friends” during a segment about snacks to eat while watching the event.
Whew! Assembling the campaign “was no small task, I’ll say that. And one of the CMOs was like, ‘I’ve done a lot of these, and I don’t envy what you’re about to walk into with the idea you have,” says Jones. “And, yeah, that was right.”
