The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate’s widely watched Super Bowl ad designed to combat antisemitism instead sparked a heated divide within the Jewish community over the effectiveness of its message.

Titled “Sticky Note,” the ad from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s group featured a Jewish student being harassed by his high school classmates because of his religion, with bullies placing a “dirty Jew” sticker on his backpack. In a show of allyship, a Black classmate puts a blue square over the note. “Do not listen to that,” he tells his Jewish classmate. “I know how it feels.”

A chorus of commentators criticized the advertisement, which is part of a $15 million media campaign that will also include ad spots during the Winter Olympics, for depicting Jews as victims in need of protection from non-Jews and for avoiding the reality that the source of many antisemitic incidents in schools stem from hostility toward or hatred of Israel.

But the leader of Kraft’s group told Jewish Insider that the ad wasn’t trying to appeal to a Jewish audience. Instead, Blue Square Alliance president Adam Katz told JI that with more than 100 million viewers, the Super Bowl provides an opportunity to reach an audience that is “unengaged — and in many cases uninformed —- about antisemitism … We’re very focused on this audience that’s lacking awareness, empathy and motivation to act,” he said.    

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Antisemitism Research also responded to the flurry of negative feedback to the commercial by running its own test last week, and shared the results exclusively with JI. (ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt was one of the first Jewish leaders to praise the message of the advertisement, amid the criticism on social media.)

The ADL was involved in testing audience reactions to the Blue Square Alliance commercial amid the political debate over its impact, Katz said. The group conducted a randomized controlled experiment between Feb. 5-6, where about 1,000 viewers saw the group’s ad and a control group that saw an unrelated ad. The survey research, according to the ADL, found that the group that saw the antisemitism ad said they were notably more likely to “think antisemitism is a serious problem,” interrupt friends or family who make antisemitic comments and feel more motivated to fight antisemitism. 

While the ADL and Blue Square Alliance often partner with each other, the test was done independently. 

Katz told JI that the commercial was also tested for audience reaction by the Blue Square Alliance before it aired. He told JI that, based on the initial feedback, the foundation made tweaks to the ad so it would resonate more closely with viewers disengaged with the issue of antisemitism.

“Our research goes very deep into who [the Super Bowl audience is], what do they know, what don’t they know and we see very concerning data points around the awareness, visibility and concern about antisemitism. It’s just not on their radar. We’re talking about over 100 million Americans classified as unengaged on this topic who just don’t see antisemitism as a significant problem, as their problem to solve or as something they can have an impact on. That’s our audience.” 

Leading up to the Super Bowl, Katz said Blue Square ran focus groups mostly consisting of non-Jewish and racially diverse Gen Zers and millennials. “We start by coming up with lots of different content and put those concepts in front of a testing audience, which is representative of our target audience of unengaged,” said Katz. 

By the time the ad was finished, Katz said, it was “tested many times in raising awareness, empathy and ultimately raising attention to become an ally.” 

“We have seen a particular rise in antisemitic sentiment among younger generations,” continued Katz. “Gen Z is three times more likely to witness antisemitism but twice as likely to say it’s not a problem. How do we reach that audience and give them a visible example of allyship?”

The answer, he said, is “allyship that feels approachable,” such as in a school setting. 

“We wanted to focus on [an example] of what it looks like when everyday allies can get involved.”  

Katz also said that the slur of “dirty Jew” is one that is increasingly commonplace in school settings, and one that viewers were most familiar with as an indicator of antisemitism.  

“There are several real-life examples where students have been harassed using phrases like dirty Jew. We looked at the prominence of that particular phrase, we explored different things that could be written on that sticky note and we looked at what is really cutting across all different segments of the audience.”

Blue Square “found that there were nearly 500 million impressions of the phrase ‘dirty Jew’ on social media in the last three years,” Katz said. “The usage of that phrase is up 174% over the last three years. The usage of all slurs is up but not to that magnitude.”