Sally’s Seashells: How Squarespace & Zendaya Created an Effective Super Bowl Ad

While companies vie for Super Bowl advertising glory annually, “Sally’s Seashells” dominated this year’s attention. Featuring world-famous actress Zendaya and rapper André 3000, the ad campaign successfully reached millions of viewers during the commercial breaks. Simultaneously, Squarespace’s ad spot flooded major social media platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

When a mere 30-second Super Bowl commercial costs advertisers $6.5 million, you better believe that they’ll pull out all the stops. Oftentimes, this means onboarding relevant celebrities to facilitate brand recognition and virality. With “Sally’s Seashells” accomplishing that and more, let’s break down why it works and why it’s frequently found in many people’s top ads lists for 2022.

Sally’s Seashells (Extended Version) | Featuring Zendaya & André 3000 | Super Bowl Commercial 2022

Breaking Down “Sally’s Seashells”

When you only have 30 seconds to captivate an audience of millions of unique people, you need to get a lot of things right. Here are a few of the main aspects of Squarespace’s ad that combine to create such a viral success.

Star Power

Nobody’s star is rising higher right now than Zendaya’s making her a prime cast for “Sally’s Seashells”. In the last year alone, Zendaya starred in Spiderman No Way Home, Dune, and Euphoria. As one of the most recognizable names and faces in the world right now, Zendaya alone is enough to get people talking.

But viewers shouldn’t discount, André 3000, either. A star in his own right, André 3000 is an accomplished American singer, songwriter, actor, and rapper. Plus, he continues to release new music to this day.

Relatable Story-Telling

With “Sally’s Seashells” narrative, everybody has heard the tongue twister about Sally selling seashells by the sea shore. It’s a phrase that people young and old understand.

Moreover, Squarespace incorporated it as a way to tell the story of a small business. Basically, this efficiently pushes the message that SquareSpace is an easy way for small businesses to build a customer base.

Content Tone

While Super Bowl ads don’t always take the fun, lighthearted path, this one did. Squarespace, after all, started as a user-friendly website builder platform. Through the years, the brand acquired additional tools to ease the process of building a digital brand.

Like all brands, SquareSpace wants to cast itself in a positive light. But the combination of its beachside locale, fun story, soothing voice of André 3000, and superstar main character make “Sally’s Seashells” memorable for all the right reasons.

What Makes “Sally’s Seashells” an Effective Super Bowl Ad?

This ad has a lot of going for it. It’s cute, fast-paced, memorable, has star power, a fun narrative. It even features a catchy tagline: “Everything to Shell Anything.” Ads that do it all like this provide a plethora of benefits to the companies who take the monetary risks to put it all together.

What Does Squarespace Gain?

The first major thing Squarespace gains from this ad is association with Zendaya who typically is very selective as to which brands she lends her face and name. She’s associated with high-end companies like CoverGirl, Beats by Dre, Lancôme, and Dolce & Gabbana. Having her represent Squarespace gives them an edge that not many celebrities can provide.

Next, Zendaya’s brand pulls in a lot of Squarespace’s target audience for this ad which is younger small business owners. Finally, as mentioned above, Zendaya even being in a Super Bowl ad was enough to get people talking and put this ad on every “Best Super Bowl Ads” listicle on the internet. This coverage and publicity fully makes it worth the price of an A-list star like Zendaya.

Get People Talking Like “Sally’s Seashells”

Businesses have very little time to grab the attention of their audiences. Sometimes, the best way to do that is to enlist the help of some of the world’s biggest celebrities to make waves.

For SquareSpace, getting Zendaya not only gave them easy buzz and publicity, it also elevated their brand by association and helped to attract their ideal customer. A true win all-around.

To get people talking like “Sally’s Seashells” did,, book a Planning Session with the digital marketers at Rizzo Young Marketing.