So, the coverage of Super Bowl ads has very quickly become ridiculous with Hulu and all of the outlets offering themselves as the sneak platforms for the commercials. Everything happened so fast that I wonder how many companies had to quickly abandon their release plans on their own commercials in order to join everyone else in showing their SB commercials. With these spots and the excitement around them going supernova, it has been an example of the best-laid tease and release plans going up in smoke as the methodology for releasing SB commercials changed dramatically and quickly this year.
With so many commercials already available in multiple locations online, will people care as much when they actually air on Sunday? Will the Volkswagen spot that is merely teased by the barking dogs match the hipness and excitement that the tease is generating? It’s already garnered close to 12 Million views on YouTube since it was posted two weeks ago. The actual commercial is on YouTube and has been seen 1.6 Million times in two days.
As I no longer have a favorite team in the running, I can only hope for good things for my commercial. It isn’t my commercial other than it was shot at my house, but what was behind it is what has me rooting for its success.
I don’t know if it’s an honor or just a pain to actually have a super bowl spot shot at your house. The John Stamos Oikos commercial is the one that was shot in a fake kitchen placed in the dining room adjacent to our actual kitchen. When we were asked if we were game to have a shoot in our home, we agreed partially based on who was asking and a lot on what was behind the actual production.
What began as a crowdsourcing engagement on Poptent actually became a pretty good story. Upon seeing the spots that were submitted for the invite assignment, the brand managers at Dannon and their agency, Y&R, decided it would be great to allow the winning director, 21 year-old Remy Neymarc, to re-shoot his commercial professionally with the real talent (Stamos). While there was an on-set learning curve, the brand managers, Y&R Creative Director, the Poptent management team and even a very gracious John Stamos were great at helping out the young director in what could have been disastrous.
You can get a sense of the production and the people in the video below:
Interestingly, on a side note and just reiterating how crazy this pre-bowl seeding of spots is, the pre-roll for the making-of video on YouTube has been the Teleflora Super Bowl ad.
So, will this video be the most remembered? I don’t know if that will be the case. Will it be rated in the top half of videos by viewers? We’ll have to wait on that too. The great thing is that the brand not only used a concept that a contest winner had, but they actually went ahead and produced the fully polished star talent version of that same video with the original filmmaker at the helm. Dannon and Poptent were not the only ones crowdsourcing for their Super Bowl spot. You could say that Doritos is giving an equal chance to the directors of their finalist videos and the ultimate winner – whose spot will actually air during the game. But, Dannon and Poptent went an extra step in helping develop a young filmmaker by having them go through a real process with all of the players in the room – a completely different experience than shooting a video with no-one else having a say other than your internal group of friends.
Having said that, the production went off almost as smoothly as any other set I’ve been on with seasoned directors. The fact that there was an entirely separate crew on the set for the B-Roll and Making Of pieces could have only added to the stress, but everyone handled it quite well.
Perhaps my stress was the only one that rivaled that of Neymark’s. You see, I was told that there would be around 20 people tops and there ended up being close to 50. As the day wore on, I grew more and more stressed about the growing crowds and the effect that they could have on my art collection that was on the walls. But, it wasn’t about me. And, luckily, nothing of importance was damaged.
Ultimately, a feel-good story is making it onto the largest ad platform – the Super Bowl. Hopefully, the mayhem surrounding the Super Bowl ads don’t diminish what goes into them and the opportunities they could provide. This one was a good story that will hopefully help the brand as much as the filmmaker – oh, and it is a cute spot as well…
Enjoy the game/ads and take solace in the fact that the madness will soon end – at least for another year…
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