Svedka Super Bowl Commercial Contest Offers $500,000 to Creators Who Devise Winning Spot for Big Game

Vodka can be used to make everything from an espresso martini to a Moscow Mule. One Super Bowl advertiser hopes people will use the beverage in a bid to make $500,000.

After tapping AI to help craft a 30-second commercial in Super Bowl LX, Svedka Vodka will instead turn to fans and followers and ask them to create the brand’s next Big Game extravaganza. Participants who are 21 years old or older must create a 15-second ad for Svedka Vodka Water, a new cocktail offering, and submit it at biggamecontest.svedka.com between 12:01am ET on November 2, 2026 and 11:59pm ET on December 1 of this year.

“We are hoping to get quite a few submissions,” says Sara Saunders, group president and chief marketing officer at Sazerac, which distributes Svedka, Buffalo Trace and 1792, among other spirits, during a recent interview. “I do think the dollar value will attract a healthy amount.” In the process, she says, the company expects to spark new rounds of conversation around Svedka, which it acquired in 2024. The AI spot revived Svedka’s old“fembot” adverrusbg character and got people talking about whether artificial intelligence should replace the creativity of Madison Avenue.

While digital outcry about the use of AI surfaced in online forums, Saunders says, sales rose — and notably. Svedka has “shown very strong double-digit growth for the past nine months in a category that has been down in an industry that has been down.”

Little wonder, the executive says, that the company moved early to secure 30 seconds of Super Bowl ad time from Disney, which will telecast Super Bowl LXI on Feb 14, 2007. The company has been selling half a minute of ad inventory for around $8 million or more according to people familiar with discussions. Sazerac also plans to air a second 15 second commercial in the gridiron classic for another product that Saunders declined to specify.

While the winning ad won’t be seen until closer to kickoff, Svedka’s promotional activities essentially start now. The company has tapped Andy Cohen to help judge the commercials. In an era when consumers don’t hesitate to post even hurtful comments, says Saunders, Cohen knows how to operate.

“How do you address controversy and mean tweets with a better person than Andy Cohen? He lives in it. He thrives in it,” she says. To kick off the company’s Super Bowl contest, Svedka will release a video of Cohen talking to the fembot about some of the reaction to her most recent ad, “addressing some of the polarization had on. We just felt like he was really the right fit to have that dialogue with her,” Saunders says.

In an interview, Cohen says he’s in his element. “Look, I am used to hearing so much viewer feedback from so many different directions and putting people on the spot,” he says. “I think that the fact that they’re bringing me in to do this is so genius, and it’s so organic.” Cohen’s turn with Svedka comes after his appearance earlier this year in a Super Bowl ad for Nerds candy.

In a different era, commercials created by independent consumers were known as “user-generated ads,” and sparked questions when PepsiCo’s Doritos proposed employing them in the Super Bowl. In 2007, PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay snacks division solicited the work of amateur filmmakers and would-be ad-agency creatives through its “Crash The Super Bowl” contest. For nearly a decade, the concepts submitted for consideration turned out to be some of the most popular spots aired during the NFL extravaganza. At the time, the idea was almost unheard of: How could some hobbyist use their own equipment and come up with a commercial that would be as compelling as the stuff produced by blue-chip marketers like Bud Light or Coca-Cola?

Indeed, Doritos found abandoning the idea difficult. The company revived the contest in 2025.

In 2026, creating content has never been easier, thanks to A.I. and digital production tools. If user-generated Doritos ads made a splash last decade, imagine what might be possible today.

Executives at Sazerac understand they may get ads made via AI, or with low-budget techniques. On the other hand, some of the submissions may seem almost cinematic or show artistic ambition. The company wants commercials. The company will give entrants free access to a digital toolkit that contains creative assets, including images of Svedka Vodka Water – which means no one will be required to buy can of the beverage to create a submission.

Weeks remain before the frenzy of interest in the Super Bowl starts to rise, but Svedka will need all the time it can get. It must vet the commercials, make certain they meet Disney’s standards and announce s pick, hopefully by mid-December. “It’s a sprint,” says Saunders.

Contestants will be told the ads need to be centered around Svedka Vodka Water and the company will suggest they use the fembot. “We are not mandating that,” says the executive.

Creators may want to keep the Super Bowl audience in mind, suggests Cohen. A Super Bowl commercial is “the most mass thing that you can possibly do. There is no more mass piece of entertainment than the Big Game and everything around it.”