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Ice cream brand Häagen-Dazs is entering the highly competitive Super Bowl ad mix, as it has purchased national airtime during Super Bowl 59. The brand is in the game for the first time in its more than 60 years in business.
The brand is now found in 25% of U.S. households, and Häagen-Dazs decided the time had come to reach out to its audience in the year’s biggest and most watched sporting event.
“This is a momentous occasion for the brand and an iconic cultural moment that brings us together through food,” said Rachel Jaiven, head of Häagen-Dazs marketing, in a statement. “We’re proud to be a part of the Super Bowl for the first time and shine a new light on our indulgent and growing portfolio.”
The Super Bowl work will be led by a new creative agency partner, nice&frank, which will develop and produce the brand campaign activating during the Super Bowl and other key cultural moments throughout the year, including a platform for the brand. Nice&frank won the work after a competitive pitch led by the brand.
As the newly awarded lead creative for the U.S., nice&frank will assume creative and strategic marketing duties moving forward. Häagen-Dazs had named BBH its global lead creative agency earlier this year, and this work will be separate from that remit.
Details of the deal were not disclosed, but COMvergence estimates the 2023 U.S. spend for Haagen-Dazs at $32 million for both traditional and digital.
Nice&frank is an independent creative agency, launched in 2022 by ex-Goodby Silverstein & Partners execs Laura Petruccelli and Graham North. The agency has already done work for the San Francisco Giants, Kits Eyewear and Les Mills, all won without a pitch.
Won with the first pitch
Häagen-Dazs is the first pitch nice&frank has been involved with, and it won the work partly due to its founders’ heritage with previous Super Bowl work with GS&P, but also through its passion for the brand.
“We instantly fell in love with the nice&frank team. Their creativity, honesty and passion for Häagen-Dazs was evident from the start. We knew right away they were the perfect partners to help bring us to the Super Bowl, and further our legacy as a respected and loved brand,” said Jaiven.
When nice&frank started conversations with the brand, the agency thought it was just to be an agency partner for a new brand platform, but the team discovered that the Super Bowl was the launch pad for the new platform a few meetings in, and with a Super Bowl heritage, the agency was able to land the work.
Petruccelli, co-founder and CCO at nice&frank, said that the fact that the brand wanted the agency more for the creative platform and the long-term relationship was much better than just being a one-off collaborator.
“It’s a deeper relationship, which is great,” Petruccelli told ADWEEK.
She continued that the agency’s name helped land the business because they live up to the name.
“It may be on the nose, but clients are excited to work with people that are values-driven, and that want to have like a kinder, more frank way to work,” said Petruccelli.
Tamera Geddes, partner and president at nice&frank said the agency was thrilled to have won the business for a brand as iconic as Häagen-Dazs.
“For a company that believes in the power of being nicer and franker, working with ice cream is a dream. We love the attention to detail and care that’s put into all the incredible flavors, and this becomes an enormous creative playground for us,” said Geddes in a statement.
Petruccelli said that Häagen-Dazs wants to enter culture the right way and the Super Bowl is a way to do that in the biggest way possible while extending the platform far beyond the one big event.
Tone was one of the big topics of conversation for the agency and brand as they got to know each other, and the Super Bowl will help set that tone.
“They’re such a stylish brand. They’ve done a great job in the past couple of years of upping their look and feel to feel culturally relevant in that way. But how you elevate with a bit of a wink in the Super Bowl is a really fun challenge. I’m very proud to say we’ve landed them an idea and a platform that will help them do that,” said Petruccelli.
Assisting in the development and activation of the Häagen-Dazs Super Bowl 2025 campaign are existing agency partners Spark Foundry, which manages paid media across the Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream portfolio, and The Door for all public relations, influencer and talent support.
