In its fourth Super Bowl appearance, He Gets Us is getting personal.
The group behind Jesus’ Super Bowl presence since 2023 dropped three initial ads as part of its “Loaded Words” campaign, which will run throughout the holiday season, with placements in Times Square on New Year’s Eve and during the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in February.
Two more ads will be released before the Super Bowl, with one 60-second ad running in the second half of the game during NBC’s national broadcast on Feb. 8. The campaign will extend through the World Cup in June.
He Gets Us is a campaign run by nonprofit Christian group Come Near that aims to revamp the reputation of Jesus Christ, Christianity’s central figure. This year, the group’s goal is to connect on a more personal level with viewers, with spots that tap into the unique challenges people are facing in modern life, explained Come Near’s chief creative officer, Simon Armour.
The three ads that dropped today—”Be,” “Do,” and “Don’t”—aim to show how the pressures and expectations of life in the digital age sometimes feel like they’re closing in on people. At the end of each spot, viewers are prompted to consider Jesus as the answer, with a link to the He Gets Us website.
In its first few years, the campaign was focused on interrupting preconceived notions of who or what “Jesus” is, and reintroducing him to viewers, Armour said.
“[The next chapter is built out of] the same idea, the same DNA, of He Gets Us, which is driven by empathy, love and compassion,” Armour said. “At the core of that is now, ‘Hey, he gets you where you’re at, specifically, and what you’re going through in your life.’”
To develop the concept, Come Near’s creative team spent time with focus groups over the summer, listening to what people are struggling with, and how they’re thinking about spirituality broadly. Out of those conversations, Armour said that the team identified themes of noise, chaos, and a desire for peace.
Those themes shaped how they developed the five ads for the “Loaded Words” campaign, which were shot over nine days in Los Angeles. Filmmaker Salomon Ligthelm directed the spots, and cinematographer Lol Crawley served as director of photography.
