Two ads rebranding Jesus ran during the Super Bowl, and they were among the most mentioned commercials of the night—as well as wildly polarizing.

“He Gets Us” was the second-most mentioned ad campaign of the game, according to Sprinklr, the marketing and customer service software provider. The spots were behind only PopCorners' crowd-pleasing commercial based on “Breaking Bad” in terms of generating conversations.

However, the religion-themed ads generated some of the most negative reactions, quantifiably, according to Sprinklr's data. “He Gets Us" received a higher than 75% negative sentiment score, which comes from Sprinklr's aggregated real-time insights gathered from the tone of the tweets mentioning the commercials. The negative sentiment was among the lowest scores of more than 80 commercials tracked.

“He Gets Us” is part of a wider TV campaign that aims to reintroduce Jesus to a new generation. The Super Bowl campaign opened with a 30-second spot called “Be Childlike,” showing wholesome images of children cooperating, with a soundtrack of Patsy Cline’s “If I Could See The World.”

The campaign's 60-second ad later in the game, “Love Your Enemies,” was more about conflicts among adults, playing off the contrast with the ad about the children. The second commercial featured black-and-white photos of tense moments around the U.S. from the past few years, and the visceral imagery spoke to divisions within the country.

The ads were certainly conversation starters, with “Love Your Enemies” having the tagline: “Jesus loved the people we hate. He gets us. All of us.”

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“He Gets Us” was measured as the second-most mentioned brand, according to Sprinklr data, which tracked online conversations over the past two weeks, and throughout the game. The campaign was in the top five in terms of sparking the most mentions and retweets per minute, according to data between kick-off and the end of play. After the second “He Gets Us” commercial aired, tweets spiked at about 150 to 200 a minute. Tubi’s ad, which tricked viewers into thinking someone changed their connected TVs to the Tubi app, propelled the highest conversations per minute at about 600, according to Sprinklr. Dunkin', Bud Light and Rakuten also hit standout viral moments on Sprinklr’s in-game monitoring metrics.

The “Be Childlike” spot came it at No. 8 in USA Today's Ad Meter rankings, while “Love Your Enemies” ranked No. 15. 

Some supported the message, while others were critical, especially of the Signatry/Servant Foundation, which helped fund the ad. Critics noted the organization reportedly donated millions of dollars to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit that has led policy fights to roll back abortion rights and allow businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ customers. (A spokesperson for the campaign said “He Gets Us” was not “backed, supported or funded by the Alliance Defending Freedom.”) The campaign is backed by a coalition of Christian donors.

Based on the reported $7 million-per-30-seconds price tag for this year's Super Bowl ads, it would have cost $21 million to air the two in-game commercials on Fox. The “He Gets Us campaign, which launched in 2021, received a $100 million investment in March 2022 to make it more nationally focused. The agencies behind the ad were Lerma/ and Haven.

That price tag for the ads seemed to drop the most jaws, with reactions flying in on Twitter. There were a lot of comments about the wisdom of forking over so much money. And advertisers, well, they were most interested in the ROI. Ad agency R/GA tweeted about the spot, wondering what metrics the group would even use to calculate if the ad buy was worth it. 

The group behind “He Gets Us” noted last year that the marketing message was generating website visits, texts and attracting people into online chats. The campaign, which has appeared on billboards, TVs and online, led to more than 100 million views on YouTube and 2 million website visits, and that was in April, before the major push. 

At least one ad watcher tweeted that the commercials were undeniably compelling compared to other ads. Many people were more interested in who was paying for the ads, and leery of the political undertones of the spots.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”

Former NFL star and ex-Senate candidate Herschel Walker tweeted: “Great game [tonight] and awesome ad sharing the grace of Jesus' forgiveness, compassion and love! He gets us and loves us all. #HeGetsUs.”

Regardless of the tenor of the talk around the commercials, the campaign received some of the highest engagement, according to EDO, another marketing research firm. On EDO’s ad ranking, the “Love Your Enemy” spot, which ran in the fourth quarter, had the second-highest engagement score from the night, behind the trailer for the movie “The Flash.”

Here is how some people responded to the campaign on Twitter: