--- title: Nationwide Super Bowl Ad: Here's Why They Ran the Ad About Dead Kids description: It was to raise awareness about the number one cause of death for children canonical: https://time.com/3692883/nationwide-insurance-super-bowl-ad/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-02T23:08:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:56:41.077Z og:title: Here's Why Nationwide Ran That Depressing Super Bowl Ad og:description: It was to raise awareness about the number one cause of death for children og:url: https://time.com/3692883/nationwide-insurance-super-bowl-ad/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltebfc49ea793a5747/69877d4155a8595a0ba85988/nationwide-halftime.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: nationwide-halftime og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's Why Nationwide Ran That Depressing Super Bowl Ad twitter:description: It was to raise awareness about the number one cause of death for children twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltebfc49ea793a5747/69877d4155a8595a0ba85988/nationwide-halftime.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's Why Nationwide Ran That Depressing Super Bowl Ad  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Feb 2, 2015 11:08 PM UTC   by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Feb 2, 2015 11:08 PM UTC Nationwide Insurance has been getting some flak for its super-depressing Super Bowl ad about a child’s death, and now the company is telling its side of the story. “We were not trying to sell insurance with this ad,” says Nationwide CMO Matt Jauchius. “We were trying to save kids’ lives by making people aware of this.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ([CDC](http://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/leading%5Fcauses%5Fof%5Fdeath%5Fby%5Fage%5Fgroup%5F2012-a.pdf)), accidents are the number one cause of death for children, and Jauchius says that’s been true since the 1950s. In fact, he said, if you average the number of children who die in accidents per year (9,000), it comes out to about [one per hour](http://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/national%5Faction%5Fplan%5Ffor%5Fchild%5Finjury%5Fprevention.pdf). That means that over the course of the Super Bowl, four children could have been killed by preventable accidents. Jauchius notes that there is no insurance policy explicitly advertised in the spot. Instead, the ad was designed to promote the company’s Make Safe Happen program, which raises awareness about preventable accidents and offers tools to help parents make their homes safer (like checklists organized by age, or room in the home.) But what about criticism that the ad’s tone was too depressing for Super Bowl Sunday? Jauchius disagrees, citing ads about [cyberbullying](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/coca-cola-targets-online-hate-its-makeithappy-super-bowl-campaign-162547) and [domestic violence](http://time.com/3684144/super-bowl-nfl-domestic-violence-ad/) that also ran during the game. Plus, he notes, what better time to raise awareness than when [millions](http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/02/02/super-bowl-delivers-its-highest-overnight-tv-rating-ever/) of Americans are tuned in at the same time? “Some people would say that the Super Bowl is not the place for these kinds of ads that are trying to do social good,” he says. “But if all of this saves one kid’s life, it’s more than worth it.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3692883/nationwide-insurance-super-bowl-ad/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3692883/nationwide-insurance-super-bowl-ad/"},"headline":"Here's Why Nationwide Ran That Depressing Super Bowl Ad","datePublished":"2015-02-02T23:08:51.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:56:41.077Z","description":"It was to raise awareness about the number one cause of death for children","url":"https://time.com/3692883/nationwide-insurance-super-bowl-ad/","keywords":["Living","Parenting","Advertising","Super Bowl topic","Super Bowl ads","Insurance"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltebfc49ea793a5747/69877d4155a8595a0ba85988/nationwide-halftime.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltebfc49ea793a5747/69877d4155a8595a0ba85988/nationwide-halftime.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"nationwide-halftime","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3692883/nationwide-insurance-super-bowl-ad/","name":"Here's Why Nationwide Ran That Depressing Super Bowl Ad"}}]}] ```