Who Is The Woman In The Nerds Gummy Clusters Commercial?
During Super Bowl LVIII, Nerds candy aired a commercial in which a giant red gummy creature recreates part of the iconic chair dance from "Flashdance." Whereas the film's protagonist Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals) pulls a lever that showers her with water, the gummy giant is covered in seemingly sentient Nerds creatures. Then the camera zoom in and out on the candy chimera, transforming it into a real-life Nerds gummy cluster in the hand of a young woman.
That woman is Addison Rae, a performer in film and music whose fame originated with her large social media following. On TikTok, notably, she's one of the platform's five most popular accounts. Rae, in fact, was chosen in part for her affinity for dance — one of the skills with which she built her massive TikTok audience. While she simply appears as herself in the Super Bowl spot, in promotion for the commercial she's a dance instructor, teaching the Nerds gummy the "Flashdance" routine.
According to Magen Hanrahan, a Senior Vice President who works in the marketing department at Nerds owner Ferrara Candy Company, both Rae's popularity and talent were integral to her involvement in the ad. "Our core consumer is Gen Z, so we wanted to connect with them through a recognizable talent who is active on the channels where they are most engaged," Hanrahan told Forbes. "Additionally, what also drew us to Addison Rae is her authentic love for the brand combined with her background in dance."
Addison Rae leveraged her social media following to break out into other industries
While she's expanded the scope of her career well beyond just social media, Addison Rae remains sporadically active on TikTok, where she maintains a following of more than 88 million users. Rae joined TikTok in 2019 and grew her following rapidly before expanding the scope of her career to a wide variety of professions by the next year.
One of the first ways she branched out of social media was a podcast with her mom, Sheri Nicole, that she launched in 2020. That same year she also launched a cosmetics brand, leveraging the popularity of her makeup-focused TikTok videos. Then, in 2021, she debuted as a recording artist with a single titled "Obsessed."
Rae also debuted as a feature film actor in 2021 — following a voice acting gig and some music video work — opposite Tanner Buchanan of "Cobra Kai" fame as one of the stars of the 2021 "She's All That" remake, titled "He's All That." She's also in Eli Roth's 2023 horror film "Thanksgiving." Rae, then, has followed a path typical for a social media influencer, becoming a general sort of multimedia celebrity, ultimately resulting in her lead role in a 2024 Super Bowl commercial.