“He Gets Us,” the ad campaign centered around rebranding Jesus for the contemporary world, returned to the Super Bowl with two commercials.

Also read: “He Gets Us” ad sparks AI confusion, lesson for marketers

A 60-second ad titled “Foot Washing” appeared in the first quarter of the game, and a 15-second ad, titled “Who is My Neighbor?” is set to run in the fourth quarter. Unlike last year’s ads, which were black and white and had a photo-journalistic feel, these ads feature vibrant colors and a still-life style reminiscent of gallery portraits.

Both ads were created by Dallas-based agency Lerma/.

“Foot Washing” is a reference to the Bible story about Jesus washing his disciples’ feet during the Last Supper on the night before he was crucified. It comes as this week starts the Lenten season.

The ad shows a series of images depicting people with opposing views or hailing from different backgrounds washing each other’s feet. Examples include a police officer washing the foot of a young Black man and a woman washing the feet of another woman outside of a family planning clinic. It is set to a cover of the INXS song “Never Tear Us Apart” by singer Jenn Mundia.

As the video plays there is a slight zoom motion on each image. While the images may look AI-generated or like actual paintings, they’re photographs shot by Julia Fullerton-Batten, a photographer who has experience in the fine arts industry.

“Her style just elevates the subject matter to an idealistic kind of world,” Lerma/ Brand Leadership Principal Jon Lee said. “We took these different subjects that might be considered to be ideologically different than one another and we created this new style to imagine what the world might look like. The work that we’ve done up to this point has been black and white and photo-journalistic in nature, and it oftentimes paints a picture of the present. We wanted to use this new style to paint a picture of what could be.”

The video then ends with the lines “Jesus didn’t teach hate,” and “He washed feet.”

The second ad was done by a different director, Trey Hill, and a photographer named Bret Curry. It starts with the question “Who is my neighbor?” and shows images of a diverse group of people in terms of age, race and status.

“Our intent in both of these [new] ads is to share the authentic love that Jesus showed to all people,” Lee said. “We hope that [this campaign] is an invitation for all people, no matter what they believe, to see the story of Jesus as belonging to them, and invite them to explore it. In order to do that, some of our imagery is designed to be disruptive of our preconceived notions of who Jesus was.”

Both ads were led by Lerma/ Creative Principal David Morring and Creative Director Ryan Beals, who have been responsible for the majority of the “He Gets Us” work, including last year’s Super Bowl ads. Lee said that the agency has made sure to have people from diverse religions work on the account.

Beyond the Super Bowl, the “He Gets Us” work for the remainder year will focus on how Jesus loved his neighbors, Lee said.

“[Jesus] told us that one of the most important things that we can do is love our neighbor as ourselves,” Lee said. “Jesus didn’t value what the rest of the world values. He didn’t need to be right or seek power, he just commanded us to love each other.”

New ‘He Gets Us’ leadership

A newly formed nonprofit called Come Near now spearheads the initiative, which was previously funded and overseen by the non-profit The Servant Christian Foundation, which also does business as an organization called the Signatry. In the past, the campaign was criticized for its affiliation with the Servant Christian Foundation, and in particular, one of its benefactors, David Green, the billionaire founder of Hobby Lobby who has vocally supported conservative policy issues involving LGBTQ and contraception rights.

While Come Near is billed as a separate entity from the Servant Christian Foundation, Rolling Stone reported this month that Green’s son, Mart Green, is one of the board of directors for the new non-profit. A spokesman for Come Near confirmed to Ad Age that Mart Green is one of Come Near’s four board of directors.

The Come Near spokesman declined to comment on specific donors. “Like many non-profit organizations, Come Near is not going to comment on individual donors, whether that’s people or entities or funds. What’s really important is that this campaign, and ‘He Gets Us’ is not led, it is not owned, it is not governed by any one single funder or funding group," the spokesman said. 

Last year’s Super Bowl ads were polarizing to some and garnered both positive and negative attention, according to metrics from marketing analytics firm Sprinklr.

The “He Gets Us” campaign videos have 3.7 billion views to date, Lee said before the Super Bowl. The “He Gets Us” website, which currently gets 1.5 million visitors a month, includes things such as reading suggestions for a “skeptical audience,” Lee said.

“We’ve learned that these ads resonate well with the audience; we’ve learned that the content on our website is pretty compelling, that people want to stay and read multiple things,” Lee said. “We’ve also learned that people aren’t immediately ready to connect in the community most of the time, but they are deeply interested in reading about Jesus, and many are interested in exploring his story in scripture in the Bible.”