The He Gets Us campaign is back with another Super Bowl ad this year, inviting viewers to wrestle with a question Christian theologians and apologists have asked for centuries: Why don’t the material things of this world bring lasting satisfaction?
It will be the fourth consecutive Super Bowl broadcast with a He Gets Us commercial, but the first one that directly challenges the world’s materialism and consumerism – ironically, the very things many other Super Bowl ads will implicitly celebrate.
The 60-second ad opens with a young girl surrounded by dolls as a voiceover declares, “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” From there, the commercial moves through a rapid series of scenes: a teenager snapping a mirror selfie, vacationers reveling in Las Vegas, partiers dancing beneath fireworks, male bodybuilders flexing on stage, and a young man sitting intently in front of a computer screen. Throughout the ad, voices insist we must become “more beautiful” and pursue “more pleasure.”
The ad then closes with a quiet moment of introspection, with a smiling young woman standing alone in an open field, taking in the vast sky and the scenic hills surrounding her.
The final words of the ad declare: “There’s more to life than more. What if Jesus shows us how to find it?” It then guides viewers to HeGetsUs.com.
Tyler Johnson, chief impact officer of Come Near – the organization that produces and manages the ads – says the commercial’s message is rooted in Scripture.
The ad, titled “More,” also will air during the Winter Olympics and FIFA World Cup.
“It comes out of the idea that culture is telling us we constantly have to get more and more and more,” Johnson told Crosswalk Headlines. He contrasted the world’s materialistic message with the “undergirding reality of Romans 12:1-2 of ‘Don’t be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’”
Since its launch, the He Gets Us campaign has generated nearly 10 billion video views, driven more than 56 million users to its website, and sparked roughly 2 million Google searches about Jesus over the past few years, according to data from Come Near.
The He Gets Us website functions as a starting point for people who want to learn m