Ritz is further broadening its image beyond a healthful snack platter cracker with its second Super Bowl campaign. The Mondelēz International brand is returning to the massive game with a 30-second ad running in the third quarter that is ready on Ritz Island, a tropical paradise populated by the salty celebrity personalities of Bowen Yang, Jon Hamm and Scarlett Johansson, in addition to buzzing beachside parties.
The snacks marketer is squarely focused on shoring up brand equity during an evening that is predicted to see others in the packaged foods category hammer on health and wellness-oriented traits, like fiber content. “Ritz Island” is a component of a bigger effort to embrace culture-forward messaging that would appeal to younger consumers, a technique that kicked off with Ritz’s Super Bowl debut last 12 months. The Martin Agency handled each big game campaigns.
“It was step one in ‘25, and ‘26 is our probability to drive consistency and reinforce that message that we’re evolving this brand from a reasonably secure and predictable brand to something that’s somewhat bit more playfully self-aware, somewhat bit more culturally fluent,” said Olympia Portale, senior director of promoting at Ritz.
Stoking excitement
“Ritz Island” was first teased last week in an Instagram video where Yang rings up a friend whom he refers to only as “Prosciutto,” now revealed to be Hamm. The full spot shows Yang and Hamm grumpily commenting on not getting invited to a Ritz beach party from afar. They mutually resolve to place aside their grievances and pop in for five minutes, but don’t need to get their feet sandy. Johansson involves the rescue on a land-ready — and Ritz-branded — jet ski.
Ritz is supporting the industrial with a multichannel campaign that spans organic and paid social content featuring the talent, retail activations and a limited-edition, football-shaped cracker.
The latest big game effort expands on the roots of Ritz’s Super Bowl debut last 12 months with the “Ritz Salty Club,” which starred Aubrey Plaza and Michael Shannon as spokespeople who can’t hide their love for Ritz crackers despite a proclivity for crankiness. Bad Bunny, Super Bowl LX’s halftime performer, also made a cameo as a sunny foil. The similarly A-list-heavy “Ritz Island” creative sets a snarkier tone for Ritz’s marketing in 2026, whilst its parent company explores shaking up creative elsewhere.
“This will not be only a flash-in-the pan moment,” said Portale. “We’re going to be running our [big game] creative all through the 12 months.”
Establishing brand equity
Ritz thinks the salty positioning could resonate with consumers during a divisive point in time. Nothing in the promoting is political, however the approach offers a fun approach to tap into the “collective cultural response to those microfrustrations of on a regular basis life,” explained Portale.
“Saltiness is a really modern and relatable emotional state,” said Portale. “There’s the mix of somewhat little bit of mild outrage, ego bruise, some social comparison. The humor and the self-awareness, I feel people find quite relatable.”
Ritz doubling down on the Super Bowl comes as parent Mondelēz mulls a review of its U.S. creative agency roster, which incorporates Martin, now a part of Omnicom. The move follows Mondelēz hiring former Inspire Brands exec Travis Freeman as senior vp and global head of consumer experience.
“In order to proceed evolving our marketing excellence and people muscles, we periodically review our agency partners to be certain that every one of our brand needs and expectations are being met,” said Portale of the review. “[Reviews are] standard practice and the goal is absolutely to proceed to foster that creative considering and support those long-term marketing objectives.”
As with “Ritz Salty Club,” the brand is assessing the success of its latest Super Bowl work on two fronts: traditional business metrics, like sales growth and household penetration, and equally necessary but harder-to-pin-down cultural relevance measures.
“The goal is to strengthen and solidify the Ritz brand equity,” said Portale. “Engagement and buzz and social credibility goes to be a number one indicator of that.”
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