Shaboozey Leads Nerds Back to Super Bowl Snack Battle
For Shaboozey, the Super Bowl brings with it the opportunity to satisfy a sweet tooth.
The musician behind the hits “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and “Good News” used to spend Halloween “super excited to open up my bag” and look to and to see how many boxes of Nerds were inside. Now he’s taking part in the second Big Game commercial for Nerds Gummy Clusters, a distinctive confection that has seen sales soar.
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“As a kid, you know, obviously, we can’t keep our hands off the candy,” he says during a recent interview. “You were always in the candy aisle, whether our parents wanted us to be there or not.”
Shaboozey may have felt like he was making a return to a favorite childhood haunt when he was offered the chance to take part in the Gummy Clusters’ second run in the Super Bowl ad roster. The Ferrara confection will appear in a slot during the third quarter, says Greg Guidotti, the company’s chief marketing officer. Shaboozey appears in a teaser slated to debut Tuesday.
The Gummy Clusters are “a product that really unleashes your sense and are really kind of multi-sensorial, multi-texture and multi-flavor,” says Guidotti. “Shaboozey really plays into that. He spans different genres and music.”
In the teaser, Shaboozey snacks on a bag of Nerds Gummy Clusters while playing his guitar. But as he takes a bite of the candy, a Nerds character comes to share the stage with him. Shaboozey contributed some of the music.
The Nerds spot will vie once again with Nerds with a supermarket shelf’s worth of snacks. PepsiCo’s Doritos and Kellanova’s Pringles are among the competitors in this year’s game, which will be broadcsat on Fox on February 9. Fox has been seeking more than $7 million for a 30-second spot.
Even though the Gummy Clusters made a splash last year in a Super Bowl ad and teaser that featured influencer Addison Rae and a version of the 1983 song “Flashdance…What A Feeling,” Ferrara believes it can win more fans. The Nerds brand has 25.1% penetration among households, says Guidotti, meaning that there are still a lot of conversions to be made. He says last year’s Super Bowl appearance helped Nerds gain 4.3 percentage points in market share.
The 2024 Super Bowl spot “broke through in culture,” he says, with younger consumers who felt “it was really unique and fun.” Within a month after the end of last year’s Big Game, Ferrara decided to return.
Nerds debuted in 1983, part of a portfolio of candies marketed under the Wonka name, a nod to the fictional candy entrepreneur created by author Roald Dahl. Ferrara acquired Nerds, along with other treats like Laffy Taffy, SweeTarts, and Bottle Caps. In 2023, the company acquired Jelly Belly.
“These kinds of brands, they had great equity, but the brands were bigger than the business,” says Guidotti. Now, he says, the company is building out plans to make people more aware of the various sweets.
Shaboozey may not be the typical target. During the shoot for the teaser, he says, he had plenty of Gummy Clusters around him. “You just have to be careful you don’t peak out on the Nerds.”
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