Few artists understand the ups and downs of modern dating quite like Grammy-nominated pop sensation Sabrina Carpenter. Her lyrics blend brutally honest romantic commentary with her signature brand of flirtatious humour, a combination that’s earned her a devoted Gen Z following and crossover appeal well beyond it. So when Pringles needed someone to headline its ninth consecutive Super Bowl ad, where its star builds the perfect boyfriend out of stackable crisps, the partnership felt less like an opportune casting choice and more like fate.
The snack brand’s 2026 Big Game ad, Pringleleo, stars Carpenter as she makes her Super Bowl debut. The “Manchild” performer plays a love-weary starlet who is “so tired of boys” and ready to date a real man. When Mr. P, the brand’s mustachioed mascot, encourages her to simply “build him,” she does exactly that, constructing a soulmate named Pringleleo crisp by crisp. What follows is a montage of romantic bliss with Carpenter flaunting her love around town, which sometimes results in crumbled limbs and an ambush from a hungry mob.
As for Pringleleo’s fate after hungry fans tackle him in the ad’s finale? Carpenter picks up a crisp, takes a bite and shrugs. After all, she can always rebuild him, if needed.
Two weeks before launching the official Big Game spot, Pringles teased the collaboration with a look at Carpenter as she picked the petals of a rose made of Pringles crisps, actively pining while she waited for her love.
The ad was created in collaboration with AOR BBDO New York, formerly FCB New York.
Why Sabrina?
Choosing Super Bowl talent requires threading a needle: The star must resonate with a target demographic while maintaining broad recognisability for the most-watched television event of the year. Carpenter, currently ranked among pop music’s hottest artists, checked both boxes.
From a creative standpoint, the veteran actress has a natural, alluring penchant for comedy that often makes or breaks Super Bowl advertising. Carpenter’s willingness to roll with the brand’s absurdist humour sells the spot’s most playful moments. One of those moments involves a Kiss Cam at a sporting event, where Pringleleo’s head unceremoniously tumbles off after sharing a kiss with the lovestruck songstress. Carpenter, for her part, ignores the incident while smiling charmingly through the Jumbotron. The moment captures the unhinged energy that has become emblematic of Gen Z humour, which the brand aimed to channel.
“We were inspired by a lot of the content we were seeing within Gen Z conversations around the changing dynamics of what it means to have a boyfriend, to be single or to be active in the dating game,” Diane Sayler, senior director of full funnel marketing for salty snacks at Mars Snacking, told Campaign. “There was a headline that really stuck with us: ‘Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now?’ It enlightened us to the idea that dating is hard [and] relationships are hard. Pringles is simple.”
As evidenced by her recent SNL hosting gig, Carpenter is a known collaborator. For the campaign’s teaser, the brand presented Carpenter with multiple concepts. She ultimately chose the one featuring herself plucking Pringles rose “petals.” It happened to be the team’s favourite, but the choice was hers.
“When you’re working with talent of that level, they’re not just going to slot in and read the line you’ve written for them,” Sayler notes. “The humour had to feel like her own.”
Carpenter also represents an NFL audience that has grown increasingly gender diverse in recent years. Sayler points to what she calls “the Taylor effect,” or the surge in female viewership that accompanied Taylor Swift’s highly publicised relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, as evidence of a shifting landscape. “There is that old hangover sentiment of ‘sports are for guys,’ but the Super Bowl itself is a sporting event and a cultural event,” Sayler says. “As a result, women come along with that in a way where the viewership lends itself.”
Making it unmistakably Pringles
Beyond cultural relevance and on-brand humour, Sayler emphasises a third priority: making the ad unmistakably ownable.
“There is no worse feeling than someone remembering your ad but not the brand it was for,” she says. The solution? Encode distinctive brand assets throughout. Mr. P speaks directly to Carpenter. Pringleleo is constructed from crisps stacked in a way only Pringles can achieve. The can itself plays a starring role.
The spot also marks a continuation of the brand’s revived Once You Pop platform, which Pringles relaunched in Q4 2025 after retiring the iconic ’90s tagline years ago. “We brought it back for a new generation,” Sayler says. The refresh reframes the slogan with a simple premise: popping open a can of Pringles leads to unexpected, delightful things.
The integrated campaign extends into social content, digital media and retail marketing that will extend well beyond game day on February 8.
Source: Campaign US
