Svedka is bringing mascot Fembot back to the Super Bowl stage

If at first you don’t succeed, AI, AI again.

That’s the motto that Svedka is applying to its Super Bowl advertising.

The Sazerac-owned vodka brand made its Super Bowl debut in 2026 with an ad starring its robot mascot, Fembot, which had previously spent about a decade in retirement. The commercial was produced and animated using AI—and was, as many topics in the AI sphere are, divisive.

Of the 54 ads ranked in the 2026 USA Today Ad Meter, the Svedka spot came in at No. 53, with the largest share of voters (39%) giving it one out of five stars. But “it actually sold a lot of vodka for us,” Sazerac CMO Sara Saunders said: Svedka sales increased by about 23% during the first half of the year, and are now up about 22% from March, according to Nielsen data shared by the brand.

So Sazerac is bringing Svedka back to the Super Bowl in 2027, along with an ad for another to-be-announced brand from its portfolio. This time, however, Saunders and her team are taking feedback to heart and offering others a chance to make their own ad—with or without AI.

“We read every single comment on every single platform,” she told Marketing Brew. “I got a lot of personal emails, because my email was out there. It was clear that a lot of people thought that they could do better than us. So this year, we’re actually saying, ‘All right, show us what you got.’”

Water under the bridge

Svedka’s canned Vodka Water is getting the Super Bowl treatment next year, so Saunders and her team are asking for anyone of legal drinking age to submit their own ads that feature the product. The winner will be awarded $500,000 and the chance to have their work appear in the Super Bowl, Saunders said.

Applicants have to include one more thing in their work: Fembot.

“Fembot is our embodiment of this Svedka brand,” Saunders said. “It’s a core piece of the brand’s DNA…She’s been in our advertising for the last nine months, since the last Super Bowl, [and] works really hard for us in out-of-home, as an example, because people see her and they think about Svedka. She will be a core part of this brand for years to come.”

While the submissions must feature Fembot, the ads don’t necessarily have to be made with AI, Saunders told us. Her team is accepting all forms of creative production, from claymation to live action, although she does suspect AI will be used for some submissions.

To announce the contest, Svedka tapped the “unofficial arbiter of entertainment and drama” himself, Bravo’s Andy Cohen, Saunders said.

Water-cooler conversation

Last year’s campaign was meant to appeal to people on the younger side of the legal drinking age, and Saunders told us her team is doubling down on that category, especially considering their decision to spotlight Vodka Water. Since the product was introduced this summer, Saunders said it’s been generating buzz with a younger, health-conscious audience in particular.

Canned-cocktail drinks are particularly popular among Gen Z, according to Morning Consult.

The top KPI for Saunders and her team for 2027, as it was this past Super Bowl, will be conversation around the brand, she said. In the vodka category, with its “odorless, tasteless, and colorless” products, achieving that can be easier said than done, Saunders said, which is part of the reason she’s not afraid of a little polarization.

“Love it or hate it, we want to have that dialogue around the brand,” she said. “We believe that that dialogue helps the brand become top of mind for consumers, and that’s really important in this category.”