Vodka can be used to make everything from an espresso martini to a Moscow Mule. One Super Bowl advertiser hopes people will use the beverage in a bid to make $500,000. After tapping AI to help craft a 30-second commercial in Super Bowl LX, Svedka Vodka will instead turn to fans and followers and ask them to create the brand’s next Big Game extravaganza.
Participants who are 21 years old or older must create a 15-second ad for Svedka Vodka Water, a new cocktail offering, and submit it at biggamecontest.svedka.com between 12:01am ET on November 2, 2026 and 11:59pm ET on December 1 of this year. The AI spot revived Svedka’s old“fembot” adverrusbg character and got people talking about whether artificial intelligence should replace the creativity of Madison Avenue. While digital outcry about the use of AI surfaced in online forums, Saunders says, sales rose — and notably.
Svedka has “shown very strong double-digit growth for the past nine months in a category that has been down in an industry that has been down.” Little wonder, the executive says, that the company moved early to secure 30 seconds of Super Bowl ad time from Disney, which will telecast Super Bowl LXI on Feb 14, 2007. The company has been selling half a minute of ad inventory for around $8 million or more according to people familiar with discussions. Sazerac also plans to air a second 15 second commercial in the gridiron classic for another product that Saunders declined to specify.
While the winning ad won’t be seen until closer to kickoff, Svedka’s promotional activities essentially start now. The company has tapped Andy Cohen to help judge the commercials. In an era when consumers don’t hesitate to post even hurtful comments, says Saunders, Cohen knows how to operate.
He thrives in it,” she says. To kick off the company’s Super Bowl contest, Svedka will release a video of Cohen talking to the fembot about some of the reaction to her most recent ad, “addressing some of the polarization had on. We just felt like he was really the right fit to have that dialogue with her,” Saunders says.
In an interview, Cohen says he’s in his element. In a different era, commercials created by independent consumers were known as “user-generated ads,” and sparked questions when PepsiCo’s Doritos proposed employing them in the Super Bowl. In 2007, PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay snacks division solicited the work of amateur filmmakers and would-be ad-agency creatives through its “Crash The Super Bowl” contest.
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