Svedka is breaking ground in Super Bowl advertising by pairing its Fembot with artificial intelligence.
The vodka brand’s Big Game debut on Feb. 8 marks three firsts: the first primarily AI-generated Super Bowl commercial; the first vodka brand to advertise during the game; and the first Super Bowl spot from parent company Sazerac.
The brand’s Super Bowl push comes after Sazerac acquired Svedka from Constellation Brands in 2024 and seized the opening created when Anheuser-Busch ended its long-running Super Bowl exclusivity to the alcohol category in 2023.
Svedka brought back the Fembot in August after a 12-year hiatus as part of the brand’s revival strategy.
“Svedka had been declining and bleeding fans for a while,” Sazerac CMO Sara Saunders told ADWEEK. “We felt [the Fembot] was a valuable brand asset that had been abandoned.”
Svedka’s Super Bowl commercial, “Shake Your Bots Off,” features a new version of Fembot as well as a new character, Brobot, who dances alongside his sidekick while sipping Svedka cocktails.
The choreography is by 23-year-old Nashville resident Jessica Rizzardi, whose TikTok dance won the brand’s open call for routines that the robots could perform at the Super Bowl. Svedka and studio Silverside AI then used AI to train the robots on the dance.
Saunders said it made sense to use AI for the campaign, because “Svedka has always positioned itself as a vodka of the future.”
“How best to bring Svedka into the future than to use something used and viewed futuristically like AI?” she continued.
Though the ad was primarily AI-generated, humanity is at the heart of the Fembot’s revival, according to Saunders.
“We wanted to give [the Fembot] more humanity, in a way that felt relevant to today’s world,” she explained. “We’re tongue-in-cheek about the fact that the Fembot has come back to remind us to all be a bit more human. She demonstrates so many lovely things about being human that she can’t do, but that humans should do.”
‘AI is not a shortcut’
Saunders said she considered the reputational risks of using AI after many brands have sparked backlash for using the tech in their creative.
