Happy Valentine’s Day! Here at Kellogg Insight, we may not have candy or roses to offer you, but we do have the next best thing: academic studies about marriage.

And if this particular holiday is not your thing, never fear! We’ll also share some highlights from the 20th annual Kellogg School Super Bowl Advertising Review.

Matters of the heart

Want to understand the science of marriage a bit better? For best results, please imagine these findings presented to you in a heart-shaped velvet box:

1. Preparing to tie the knot? Consider a joint bank account.

Among the most important discussions newlyweds can have is whether and how to merge their finances. It can be a fraught conversation, as research shows that money is a leading cause of arguments between partners.

Research from Kellogg’s Eli Finkel shows one way couples can help preserve their relationship during those critical first years of marriage: by going all in on a joint bank account.

Finkel and his coauthors found that a joint bank account can help couples align their financial goals and adhere to communal norms, rather than behave in a more transactional way. If all money is everyone’s money, then partners don’t need to keep score.

“The newlywed years are considered the ‘connubial crucible.’ That means the dynamics that couples develop in those years predict how their relationship will progress thereafter,” Finkel explains. “We wanted to take that crucial period and see if we could use bank-account structure to alter how satisfied couples are in their relationships. And we found that we could.”

2. Sorry, Stevie: maybe superstition is the way.

When Kellogg’s Kieu-Trang Nguyen got married, she and her husband didn’t consult the stars to see if they were compatible. But they have plenty of Vietnamese family and friends who did—using Tu Vi, an ancient belief system that offers individuals and couples predictions about future events, such as marriages, births, deaths, business prospects, and travels.

As a scholar, Nguyen wanted to know how much these beliefs really matter to couples when it comes to making marriage decisions and whether auspicious marriages fare better.

Her recent research reveals that couples in auspicious marriages benefit in measurable ways: they earn more and have a higher standard of living, for example, and their children are less likely to drop out of school.

Which is not to say that the stars were necessarily right in their predictions. Nguyen says that there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy at work: when a couple’s social circle believes a marriage is auspicious, they are more likely to step in and offer help, buoying the couple through hard times.

3. Whom you marry has important economic effects—beyond your own household.

Was your spouse’s ambition something you noticed when you were dating? If so, research by Kellogg’s Benjamin Friedrich suggests you aren’t alone.

In particular, Friedrich and his coauthors looked at what is called educational ambition—the starting wages and wage-growth trajectories associated with various educational programs. Using administrative data from Denmark from 1980 to 2018, the researchers found that over the past forty years, couples have become more likely to self-select into marriages with partners in the same ambition category.

They estimated that this trend explains more than 40 percent of increasing income inequality since 1980. And the widening gap is driven partly by people in the highest ambition group, who are the most likely to marry one another—and who also earn more than they did four decades ago.

So when it comes to couples’—and countries’—financial outcomes, “marital sorting is becoming more and more important,” Friedrich says.

The Super Bowl’s superb ads

OK, enough of the love stuff.

For 20 years, Kellogg’s Derek Rucker and Tim Calkins have gathered students together to grade Super Bowl ads. Rather than rating them based on solely cleverness or likability—like many of us casual fans do—they use a framework developed by Rucker called ADPLAN, which measures attention, distinction, positioning, linkage, amplification, and net equity.

In 2024, the students’ overall winner was Google Pixel for its “Javier in Frame” spot. Like the Kansas City Chiefs, Google took the crown for the second year in a row; its “Fixed on Pixel” spot was the 2023 Super Bowl Ad Review winner.

“Google Pixel has clearly figured out the formula to success for advertising in the Super Bowl,” Rucker said after the event. “Once again the company was able to demonstrate a new technology that enhances the user experience, while also connecting with viewers in an unexpected, emotional way.”

Other brands that earned top marks included Mountain Dew’s “Having A Blast” and Dove’s “Hard Knocks.”

Overall, “it was a great year for advertising, and we saw very few brands miss the mark,” Calkins said. “Spots attracted attention with strong linkage, solid branding and utilized ‘celebrity wow.’”

And if the two organizers had gotten a vote? In a webinar on Monday, Rucker said his favorites were CeraVe and Reese’s, while Calkins gave the nod to Microsoft, Etsy, and Poppi.

Read more about the Super Bowl Ad Review and this year’s results here.

See you next week!

Susie Allen, senior research editor
Kellogg Insight