‘He Gets Us’ wants to be more than ‘the Super Bowl ad about Jesus’

Every Super Bowl there are a few advertiser wild cards—the ads or brands that make you go, “Huh, why’d they do that?” And then there are the Super Bowl staples—often the beer, beverage, and snack brands that show up every year without fail.

Sometimes, though, an advertiser makes the jump from a wild card to staple—and the nonprofit organization Come Near, the group behind the “He Gets Us” campaign that aims to promote Jesus Christ, seems on track to do it.

This year, “He Gets Us” will return for its fourth consecutive Super Bowl ad, with a 60-second spot slated to air nationally during the second half of the game. When thinking about the return this year, the team behind the now-annual campaign wanted to step up the creative execution and build beyond the reputation as an unexpected Super Bowl appearance.

“Historically, ‘He Gets Us’ has been thought of as the Super Bowl ad about Jesus,” Simon Armour, chief creative officer of Come Near, told Marketing Brew. “Strategically, this year, we have shifted to more of a deliberate tentpole strategy. Rather than having one big moment in the year…we’ve started to look to other moments in culture where we’re asking ourselves, ‘Okay, is there a moment where people are gathering around an experience or a feeling that is universal that we could speak into, that we think the message of Jesus would have relevance to?’”

That means that “He Gets Us” will also be a World Cup advertiser, Armour told us. While the strategy is shifting, though, the total ad investment remains similar to past years, he said. Armour declined to share specifics about the group’s funding or how much it is spending to bring the group’s message to television. Prior to 2024, “He Gets Us” was a project from the Servant Foundation, a nonprofit with ties to anti-LGBTQ and antiabortion groups.

Religious advertisers may be somewhat unique in the Super Bowl, when most other ads are for major brands and consumer goods, but other religious institutions are willing to spend to reach the rare mass live television audience. For example, the Church of Scientology has been a regional advertiser for the last 13 Super Bowls.

More is more

This year’s Super Bowl ad was created as part of a two-week shoot in Los Angeles, where the team shot five total spots. Three of the five spots were released this past December, airing during New Year’s Eve programming as well as Saturday Night Live; the ad airing during the Big Game, “More,” is the fourth in the series of ads directed by Salomon Ligthelm and shot on film. The “He Gets Us” team worked with independent creative and media agency Lerma and production shop Prettybird on the campaign.

Over the course of 60 seconds, dizzying, lush imagery presents excessive consumerism and consumption as overwhelming force before presenting an alternate path—one with the quiet outdoors and, the ad suggests, Christian teachings. The aim of the overall campaign is to recognize the “noise and chaos” of people’s everyday lives and ask viewers whether Jesus represents a different way to look at life, Armour explained.

“Part of the ‘More’ spot was really trying to unpack the absurdity of what our culture presents to us and how it’s got us chasing things that promise fulfillment, happiness, flourishing, but are ultimately letting us down,” Armour said.

Despite the return appearances of “He Gets Us” in the Super Bowl, the Big Game isn’t a given and is instead revisited each year, Armour said. This year, while the team decided to come back, they worked to push the visual language and overall narrative in an effort to continue to stand out.

“The more success you have with a certain approach, the more there becomes a need to evolve what you’re doing, because it just becomes expected, right?” Armour said.

‘Specific mission’

“He Gets Us” ads have faced criticism over the years, some of which has hinged on the question of whether spending millions on a Super Bowl ad campaign is better than helping groups in need. When asked about that criticism, Armour explained that the donors that fund the campaign are “united in a very specific mission” that is different from charity organizations.

“There are lots of organizations that focus on the mission of those other things that you mentioned, and that’s not our focus,” he said. “We are really in pursuit of the mission that we have, and that mission doesn’t change year to year. The way we approach it might change in strategy or in execution, but the mission is staying the same from year to year.”

He continued: “We’re not trying to move into places where other people are really good at those things. We’re not an organization that’s set up to do those things. There’s lots of organizations that are set up really well to do those things. And so we kind of leave that for them.”