GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. — A national ad about Jesus that is set to air during the Super Bowl has a West Michigan company behind it.
Haven is spending millions of dollars for 90 total seconds during the game and you may have seen the campaign already.
It's called "He Gets Us" and we're learning more about the ad and the company responsible.
Haven, which is a creative marketing advertising firm based in Grand Haven, hosted a sneak peek event Wednesday.
The group has spent $20 million to run a 30 second ad in the first half and a 60 second ad in the second half of the Super Bowl.
Haven's President, Jason Vanderground, calls the "He Gets Us" campaign a movement to reintroduce people to Jesus and his confounding love and forgiveness.
Previous ads have aired during the NFL playoffs, MLB games, and March Madness. The ads have uses strong images of culture along with phrases like "Jesus was wrongly judged" and "Jesus welcomed all to the table."
The campaign has been criticized for the amount of money spent. Some say that amount of money could be used for more good than commercial messaging. Many have also questioned the motives of private donors supporting the campaign.
"When people would hear, "Oh, you're spending $100 million" they're like, that's a lot of money. And I think people are rightly skeptical," explained Vanderground. "They've seen marketing be used in ways that manipulated and took advantage of people. We understand that we actually think that's healthy to be skeptical about it. But we look at Jesus and just say he was like the perfect communicator. And he used the tools and the means that he had available to him to get his message out. And that's all we're doing here."
"He Gets Us" is a 501 C-3 nonprofit that is managed by a company called Signatry which takes in the donations.
The campaign has spent $100 million in total on their ads so far which include ten days of static ads leading up to the Super Bowl showing images seen in the ad during the game.
The money spent is just a fraction of the billion dollars they plan to spend in three years.
Despite claims and attacks that "He Gets Us" is either far-right conservative backed or has a left wing woke agenda, the group insists that "He Gets Us" is a non-partisan, non-denominational movement.
