Procter & Gamble Heads South for Super Bowl, Tapping Local Commercials in Southern U.S.

One of the nation’s biggest advertisers will use the most-watched TV event of the year to focus on just a sliver of its potential customer base.

Procter & Gamble, the consumer-products giant will double down on a strategy it employed last year — running local commercials during the Super Bowl instead of the more popular (and expensive) national Big Game variety. In 2025, P&G ran local ads during the Super Bowl for pet friendly week killer Spruce in 36 southern markets, and will also put commercials for flying-insect trap Zevo on 46 different stations.

NBC will telecast the Super Bowl on February 8 and has been seeking $7 million to $10 million for 30 seconds of national ad time. Ads on loca stations showing the gridiron spectacular will cost significantly less, allowing Procter to drill down across a specific region of the U.S.

“We think it’s really important for us to show up in big, bold and unexpected ways,” says Jessica Ettelson, senior brand director for Spruce, during a recent interview. The Spruce ad will rely on a vignette about a dog eager to get out of its house to enjoy life, all backed by the 2000 hit “Who Let the Dogs Out,” by The Baha Men. Zevo’s spot demonstrates the ease of suing the trap and remakes Bonnie Tyler’s 1984 single “Holding Out for a Hero” into “I Need A Zevo!”

More marketers are using regional strategies to tackle the Super Bowl, eager to avoid the high costs of running national ads while trying to target a more specific audience bound by geographic conditions or attitudes.  Some have taken to local stations in a bid to outflank rights that bar other advertisers in a particular category from the national stage.  To be sure, local ads in the Super Bowl will cost more than they typically would on any given Sunday, but far less than national spots.

With the cost of a national Big Game campaign rising significantly, some of Madison Avenue’s top denizens have tested the ploy. Anheuser-Busch InBev has run ads for Busch in local time for a few years, and rival brewers like Diageo and Sam Adams have also employed the strategy. United Airlines and American Family Insurance have also tapped stations in the not-too-distant past.

Procter & Gamble’s focus on the South is meant to get the word out about the product to consumers who will be dealing with end-of-winter warming, says Jeff Kraft, senior brand director for Zevo. As cold weather fades away, more consumers will start to focus on gardens, yards and natural surroundings.

 “In the southern U.S, bugs are a year -round occurrence,” he notes. The Zevo ad aims to “help the consumer understand how effortless and efficient” using the trap can be, he says,  and will make the point using scenes of bugs being attracted to food.

In the past, P&G used the Super Bowl to draw the attention of millions of potential customers to Tide laundry detergent. But its use of the local strategy in 2025 for an initial Spruce ad that shows dogs having a big pool party in an outside yard helped make consumers more aware of the product, says Ettelson.

Both executives believe the attention they get from ads in the South will generate chatter and pass-along commentary that will reach consumers in other parts of the nation – who will then have some potential interest in similar ads when they move to other regions.

There’s no intention of having ads for both Spruce and Zevo appear one after the other in commercial breaks, but the Procter & Gamble executives won’t be upset if they do. “We are trafficking them separately,” says Ettleson. “We can only hope they’ll show up together” in some areas of the country.”