The Super Bowl is the largest sporting event in the United States with vast reach for commercial advertising. Super Bowl commercials are a cultural phenomenon that has attracted investigative attention owing to their powerful place in American consumerism. Yet, little is known about wellness and health messaging in these commercials, despite the essential roles of health and wellness in people’s lives and the potential for Super Bowl commercials to exert a major influence on viewers’ behaviors and lifestyle choices. This study examined wellness and health promotion/inhibition messages in 130 Super Bowl commercials from 2023 and 2024.
Guided by established conceptualizations of wellness and health promotion, content analysis and qualitative methods were used to investigate message frequencies and patterns, as well as changes in messaging across different product/service categories.
Results showed that emotional wellness was featured most frequently, while financial wellness appeared the least. About half of the commercials contained mixed messages about health promotion/inhibition. Distinct patterns were evident in the commercial content and the messaging changed across commercial categories.
This study lays the foundation for further exploring wellness and health messaging in Super Bowl commercials to understand how best to promote well-being and health through mega-events and mass media advertising.
