For its well-received Super Bowl ad last year, Reese’s chose absurdist humor over celebrities to introduce its Caramel Big Cup to the masses. This year, it’s taking a similar approach for another product intro—but supersizing it.

The new 30-second spot debuts today on AdAge.com ahead of its appearance on Fox’s Feb. 9 telecast. It promotes the Chocolate Lava Big Cup, another Reese’s innovation, which soft launched last year. The Super Bowl is its real debut for the masses.

Again eschewing celebs, the commercial, by agency Erich & Kallman, shows hordes of frenzied people visiting a volcano, thinking they can eat actual molten lava, not the candy kind—creating chaos for the park rangers in charge.

Ryan Riess, VP of brand strategy and creative development at The Hershey Co., said the non-celeb approach has always made sense for Reese’s—that the product is generally the star of its ads. But he did want to build on last year’s work with creative that was more visually epic, befitting the Super Bowl environment.

“We see our brand as the celebrity,” Riess told Ad Age. “With household penetration of upwards of 70% over a couple of years, we don’t want to share that stage with anyone. We don’t need a radical change in perception. We want people to really just enjoy our brand.”

While reviewing E&K’s concepts for the spot, Riess quickly gravitated to one that felt suitably grand, yet still simple in its form.

“It feels more epic than last year, which was something I really wanted,” he said. “We’re just taking it up another notch with something I think will really break through.”

Constructing the spot

From some 200 initial ideas from E&K, the volcano script was among 10 that went into consumer testing in animatic form. It was also the first that Riess was personally drawn to.

He called this an example of “Occam’s razor,” where the most obvious idea is sometimes the best—particularly for the Super Bowl, where ideas usually have to be simple to break through at watch parties.

“I don’t have the hubris to think the world stops for my creative,” said Riess. “We see the simplicity of this concept is an advantage, not a weakness.”

Along with the lack of celebs, the ad also has a similar structure to last year’s. It cuts back and forth from the volcano scenes to shots of the product on an orange background, with the liquid chocolate being poured over it. This way of hero-ing the product throughout the ad presents some challenges creatively.

“One of the breakthroughs we had last year was going back and forth and making the food footage its own character. That’s something we knew we wanted to do again,” said Eric Kallman, co-founder and chief creative officer of Erich & Kallman. 

“When you see orange and you’re thinking about food, you think Reese’s. That’s a huge advantage,” said Riess. “Reese’s is different than some other brands, where maybe the product isn’t as exciting. People love this product, and they actually want to see more of it.” 

Devoting a lot of time to the product shots does affect the storytelling, however. 

“Having 30 seconds seems like a long time, but when half of it is close-ups, you really have 15 seconds of live action. And then you have to set up the premise,” Kallman said. “There’s not much time for the jokes.”

Scripted vignettes for the spot came and went, based on how quickly the viewer would decipher them. For example, the old lady on the scooter yelling “It’s lava time, baby!” was a late addition, after a scene with a man getting to the lava by hanging upside from a drone, which in the end was too visually complex, was scrapped.

The October shoot outside L.A.

Directors Matias & Mathias (aka, Matias Rygh and Mathias Nordli Eriksen) of Epoch Films were brought in to shoot the commercial. They filmed in the Malibu hills outside Los Angeles in late October, not far from where the wildfires would erupt a few months later.

Kallman said he’d always admired Matias & Mathias for their combination of comic chops and cinematic style, as not many directors can do both equally well.

“I’ve been wanting to work with them for a long time,” he said. “They did a spot about a guy who poops in space—it looks as good as any Hollywood movie with a space station. They’re masters at big visual jokes that actually look cinematic and movie quality.” 

The shoot went smoothly. The actress playing the woman on the scooter is 94 years old—one of the oldest people ever to star in a Super Bowl spot. Also, the woman who plays the bride in one of the teaser spots is a long-distance runner, which helped when they did multiple takes of her sprinting up the mountainside toward the lava.

A relative Super Bowl newcomer

Before 2024, Reese’s had advertised in the Super Bowl just once—in 2020, for its Take 5 bar. Riess said a Super Bowl ad is useful when introducing a product, particularly in the confectionery category, where awareness and adoption of new offerings can be a slow burn.

“It’s not an iPhone or a Jordan sneaker, where people line up around the corner,” Riess said of a candy rollout. “One of the things we like about Super Bowl timing is when a product launches in Q4, you start to get it into distribution and some people become aware of it. Then, the minute you see the Super Bowl spot, it’s available. You can go get it right then and there. You don’t have to mark your calendar.”

Last year’s spot certainly delivered that boost. Caramel Big Cup sales jumped 34% during the teaser phase of the campaign last year, and 70% during the four weeks after the game, according to the brand. At the end of 2024, the product was named the No. 1 innovation of the year in the candy category by Circana MULO.

A Super Bowl also generally signals to consumers that the company believes in what it’s selling, Riess said—otherwise, why spend so much on the buy?

“There’s a statement of intent by a brand that wants to showcase a new product on the Super Bowl,” he said. “We’re saying, ‘We think it’s great, and we want all of you to know about it.’ That made sense last year, and it makes sense again this year.” 

Some Super Bowl advertisers paid $8 million for the first time

Media mix and metrics

The Super Bowl spot is just part of the media mix promoting the Chocolate Lava Big Cup. Reese’s introduced volcano imagery as soon as the product launched last year, and that theme continues across various partnerships and activations in 2025.

Earlier this month, the brand kicked off a year-long partnership with the “New Heights” podcast hosted by Jason and Travis Kelce; Reese’s will be featured in host reads and other content. The brand has also partnered with Jason Kelce’s ESPN show, “They Call It Late Night.”

Throughout Super Bowl week, Reese’s will be integrated into Barstool Sports’ live podcasts and digital shows, including the build-out of a Reese’s Chocolate Lava Volcano, which Barstool talent will engage with live on their Bourbon Street set. There will also be a voice-activated volcano activation in New Orleans—when people yell “It’s lava time, baby!” at a volcano, it will dispense the product.

The key metric for all media activity coming out of the Super Bowl, as it was last year, will be sales of the new product, said Riess.

“We’ll be looking at household penetration and trial. Then obviously the product needs to earn its right for repeat, but that’s what it’s about,” he said. “It’s about us getting this product tried by consumers. That’s what we want, and it’s what our retailers want.”