BLOGWix Bets on Rhett and Link to Win Super Bowl LII
Wix aired a 30-second television commercial featuring YouTube personalities Rhett and Link during the third quarter of Super Bowl LII on February 4, 2018, in the United States, produced and delivered within approximately 19 hours of receiving the advertising offer.
The campaign, titled "Coolest Collaboration," originated under circumstances that define it as one of the more unusual production stories in recent Big Game advertising history. According to wix.com, the company received the Super Bowl advertising offer on February 1, 2018, with less than 24 hours to decide and deliver a finished spot. Omer Shai, Chief Marketing Officer of Wix, confirmed this timeline publicly, noting the compressed window the team faced. The decision to proceed was swift, and production followed immediately.
Rhett and Link, creators of the long-running YouTube series Good Mythical Morning, were already embedded in the Wix marketing ecosystem at the time. Their endorsement deal with Wix had been signed in October 2017, as reported by Marketing Dive, and digital video content featuring the pair had been produced in late 2017. That prior relationship made the accelerated execution possible: talent contracts, creative familiarity, and brand alignment were already established before the Super Bowl opportunity emerged.
The objective of the campaign was brand visibility at the highest-reach moment in United States television. Super Bowl LII, held in Minneapolis, provided that platform. Wix positioned itself within the Internet and Technology category, targeting small business owners and entrepreneurs considering website-building solutions. The choice of Rhett and Link, described by Wix as creators of the most-watched daily show on the internet and identified as both genuine Wix users and fans, grounded the commercial in an authenticity argument that purely celebrity-driven spots rarely achieve. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting competent execution within an extraordinary production context.
BLOGWix had explicitly planned no television advertising for 2018. Marketing Dive reported on November 28, 2017 that the company intended to forgo Super Bowl and broader television spending in favour of digital and influencer marketing, making the January 2018 reversal a notable strategic pivot. The revised approach, confirmed by Marketing Dive on January 22, 2018, reintroduced television as a primary channel at the most expensive moment in the United States media calendar.
The strategic rationale for the pivot rests on two foundations. First, Wix already held a working influencer relationship with Rhett and Link, meaning the incremental cost and risk of extending that relationship into a broadcast format was measurably lower than building a new campaign from scratch. Second, the website-builder category in the United States was intensifying. According to data cited by themeisle.com, Wix held 0.9 percent of CMS market share in 2018, up from 0.6 percent in 2017. WordPress dominated the recognised CMS landscape at 60.0 percent of websites using a recognised CMS in 2018, per themeisle.com. Squarespace, a direct competitor targeting a similar creative-professional audience, held 2.6 percent of CMS websites in 2018, according to themeisle.com, while GoDaddy Website Builder held 0.4 percent, per cpanel.net. These figures indicate that Wix, though growing, remained a smaller player in a market where awareness investment carries outsized returns.
The Super Bowl provided a concentration of small business owners and entrepreneurs within a single national audience in the United States, precisely the demographic Wix targets. According to Kantar data cited by Ad Age, Wix had already demonstrated a willingness to invest heavily in television, with spending rising from 18 million dollars in 2015 to 28 million dollars in 2016. The 2018 last-minute slot fit a brand pattern of using television strategically rather than continuously, reserving high-spend moments for maximum category impact. The influencer-first foundation also meant the Super Bowl spot extended existing digital content rather than replacing it, preserving the brand's 2017 investment in Rhett and Link's online audience.
The "Coolest Collaboration" spot compressed a standard production pipeline into under 19 hours. According to wix.com, Omer Shai confirmed the offer arrived on February 1, 2018, and the finished film aired during Super Bowl LII on February 4, 2018. Production credits for the Rhett and Link campaign are not publicly documented beyond Wix's internal team and Shai's stated involvement.
The creative approach leaned on the existing on-screen dynamic that Rhett and Link had refined across years of Good Mythical Morning content. Rather than casting them as traditional celebrity endorsers performing a scripted role, the spot framed them as authentic Wix users, a positioning wix.com explicitly stated. This distinction matters creatively: it allowed the commercial to borrow the tone and energy of their YouTube work rather than subordinating their identity to a generic brand voice. In the context of Super Bowl commercials, where production values and scripted spectacle typically dominate, the Wix film occupied a different register, one grounded in personality rather than production scale.
The 30-second format, confirmed by ispot.tv, demanded economy. Every second of a Super Bowl spot carries the weight of an estimated cost approaching the total media investment for smaller annual campaigns. The decision to shoot within the existing Rhett and Link creative relationship, rather than constructing a new visual world, reflects a pragmatic but defensible creative choice given the timeline. The film medium allowed the brand to deliver a self-contained narrative within the Big Game context, connecting Wix's product proposition to the credibility of two internet personalities who had, by 2018, built one of the most consistent daily audiences on YouTube. In the United States, where influencer marketing and broadcast television increasingly intersect, the spot represented an early and compressed version of that hybrid strategy.
No verified performance data for the Wix "Coolest Collaboration" campaign featuring Rhett and Link is publicly available. Wix has not published view counts, brand lift figures, or conversion metrics attributable specifically to the Super Bowl LII spot, and no independent third-party measurement source has released campaign-specific results.
Structural analysis, however, supports a reading of the campaign's likely effectiveness across several dimensions. The 19-hour production turnaround, as confirmed by wix.com, is itself a brand story that extended the campaign's reach beyond the 30-second airtime. The behind-the-scenes narrative generated press coverage in the United States technology and marketing press, with Marketing Dive and Brand Innovators among the outlets reporting on the timeline, providing earned media amplification that a conventionally produced spot would not generate.
The talent selection reinforced message credibility. Rhett and Link's endorsement relationship with Wix predated the Super Bowl spot by several months, according to Marketing Dive, meaning the brand association had already been established with their YouTube audience before the Big Game aired. Audiences encountering the commercial during Super Bowl LII were, in many cases, meeting a brand partnership they could verify independently. That continuity between digital and broadcast exposure strengthens recall and trust in ways that one-off celebrity casting does not.
The Internet and Technology category competition during Super Bowl LII was significant. Within this context, Wix's choice to occupy the third quarter with a personality-driven film rather than a high-concept production distinguishes the spot tonally, if not necessarily in measured impact. The campaign represents a defensible use of a compressed opportunity in a high-stakes United States broadcast environment.
The Wix Super Bowl LII commercial, titled "Coolest Collaboration," featured YouTube personalities Rhett and Link promoting the Wix website-building platform. Rhett and Link were presented as genuine Wix users and fans, lending the 30-second spot an authenticity that distinguished it from conventional celebrity endorsement advertising during the 2018 Big Game.
Wix aired the Rhett and Link spot during the third quarter of Super Bowl LII on February 4, 2018, in Minneapolis. According to wix.com, the company received the advertising offer on February 1, 2018, giving the team less than 24 hours to confirm, produce, and deliver the finished 30-second film.
Wix produced the Rhett and Link Super Bowl commercial in approximately 19 hours. Omer Shai, Chief Marketing Officer of Wix, confirmed this timeline publicly, as reported by wix.com. The compressed turnaround was made possible by the existing endorsement relationship with Rhett and Link, which had been established since October 2017.
Wix selected Rhett and Link because they were already signed as brand endorsers since October 2017, as reported by Marketing Dive, and were identified as genuine Wix users. Their established YouTube audience for Good Mythical Morning provided brand credibility and a digital extension for the Super Bowl campaign beyond the United States broadcast audience.
Wix had explicitly planned no Super Bowl advertising for 2018. Marketing Dive reported on November 28, 2017 that the company intended to focus on digital and influencer marketing. Wix reversed that decision in January 2018 after receiving a last-minute slot offer, ultimately airing the Rhett and Link spot during Super Bowl LII.
The Wix "Coolest Collaboration" campaign featuring Rhett and Link receives a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects competent creative execution within an exceptional production context, acknowledging the 19-hour turnaround and the strategic value of deploying an existing influencer relationship within a high-stakes United States broadcast environment.
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