Lay's 2025 Super Bowl Ad Was Made By This Oscar-Winning Director

This year, one of the classic snacks at your game day party will have bragging rights, thanks to the Lay's potato chips ad directed by none other than Academy Award-winning filmmaker Taika Waititi. "The Little Farmer" ad, inspired by real life potato growers, puts the focus on the multi-generational American farming families behind the brand. The New Zealand-born director is known for storytelling that balances quirky characters, heartbreak, and laugh-out-loud moments, as evidenced by his work on the TV series "Reservation Dogs" and "What We Do in the Shadows" and feature-length films "Thor: Ragnarok" and "Jojo Rabbit." 

For his one-minute Super Bowl ad, Waititi also takes an emotional tone, following a young girl who rescues an errant potato that rolls off a truck. She plants it near the barn and tends it literally through rain and shine until harvest time. As he often does, Waititi shows the story from the child's point of view, building up to her pride as she digs up her first harvest, returns a potato to the truck, and joins her family on the porch to eat a bag of Lay's chips. 

But unlike much of his work, there's almost no dialogue at all, leaning instead on a soundtrack of musician Caroline Says covering Barry Louis Polisar's heartfelt 1977 song "All I Want Is You." According to a Lay's press release, the ad "celebrates the hard work and dedication of the many multi-generational farming families who proudly produce Lay's potatoes today" — specifically, the Pavelski family, who have been farming for five generations and have a young child similar to the star of the commercial. A few of these real farmers are even shown at the end of the commercial.

Lay's hasn't had a Super Bowl ad since 2022, when its "Golden Memories" commercial (which starred Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd) tied the brand to other emotional moments. Its return to the Big Game may not be surprising, though, given that Frito-Lay's 2024 survey of Super Bowl viewers showed that people care more about food than the game, with three in five people deciding which Super Bowl party they'll attend based on the snacks that will be served there. A longtime staple of the party scene, Lay's potato chips had a humble start.

In fact, the company's owner, Herman Lay, first sold chips from the back of his car during the Great Depression. But since the dawn of the TV era, the expert salesman Lay believed in the power of advertising — a force that helped his company grow from a small family-owned business in 1944 to the top-selling chip brand in 2022. Today, Lay's makes over 20 different flavors of chips (which we taste-tested and ranked), but this spot focuses on its Original potato chips. It may not be quite farm to fork, but farm to fistful? Sure, pass the bag. The ad airs during the Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, February 9, 2025.