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The E*Trade baby picked a new Super Bowl teammate in creative agency 72andSunny and a new pastime in pickleball for his latest Big Game ad.
Using the fast-growing “tennis for babies, but for adults” as a metaphor for the daunting world of securities trading, E*Trade’s 30-second Super Bowl 58 spot—airing during the second quarter—has its baby and a friend playing doubles against two large and unusually aggressive adults. Despite mocking it as “Wiffle tennis,” the babies recoil as the adults aim high-speed serves at their heads while yelling, “PICKLE!”
Since the baby made its debut in 2008 and is basically a well-preserved 16-year-old, he responds with heckling befitting his years: Telling his opponent that he should work on saving for “college, since you like to get schooled.” Voiced by the ad’s director, Randy Krallman of Smuggler—who also directed E*Trade’s last two Super Bowl ads—the baby and his partner not only overcome their full-grown rivals, but offers them a parting quip at the pickleball net:
“Thanks for coming to our clinic, first one’s free.”
It’s the first Super Bowl ad for 72andSunny’s New York office and its new leadership team. It took over for longtime E*Trade agency MullenLowe and turned a pitch from late 2023 into a metaphor for taking control of your financial future.
“We just had to let the creative process play out a bit, and unless you were living under a rock, you couldn’t not hear about pickleball,” said Matt Murphy, global chief creative officer at 72andSunny “It just felt really very timely to do a story, and the visual contrast between these overzealous adults playing against babies was just like, ‘OK, let’s have fun with this.’”
For E*Trade, which was purchased by Morgan Stanley in 2020 and added to its wealth management business, a more serious mission belies the ad’s tone. According to a 2024 first-quarter survey of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management’s own investors, their top financial resolution for 2024 was to learn more about investing, trading and markets. Among those investors, 73% feel that they could be doing better, while 57% feel that financial jargon hinders their ability to invest on their own.
While its creative partners have changed and its Super Bowl ads’ objectives have shifted since the baby’s debut in 2008, this year’s objective is clear: Introduce more of the Super Bowl’s roughly 100 million viewers to E*Trade and bring them into the Morgan Stanley Wealth Management ecosystem “regardless of where they are in their financial journey. In pickleball terms: Get would-be investors in the game.”
