The Point Radio: Last Minute Guide To The Super Bowl Ads
The countdown to the Super Bowl kickoff is getting shorter, and the excitement is about to start. By the end of the night, who will be the big winners and losers on Madison Avenue? BBDO AdMan, Will Bordeau, gives us some last minute tips on the commercials you don’t want to miss plus we’re on the set of the USA Network drama, SUITS. Patrick Adams talk about how the current season will close and what’s coming for the next.
In a few days, we ‘ll introduce you to the cast of the newest docu-comedy from the folks who gave us THE OFFICE, plus the cast of BLACK SAILS talks about the dark days ahead. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.
Transcript
The Point Radio Hey it's Mike Raub. Mother Nature knocked us out for a couple of days, but we're back and as promised, we gotta look at the Super Bowl ads you cannot miss. From a guy who helped create them. Plus we're on the set of suits with Patrick Adams and we'll find out what's coming up in the next few weeks there. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio.
Seems like over the past few years it's become more of a tradition to watch the Super Bowl ads than it is to watch the game. The commercials are definitely the star of the show in a lot of homes and I talked to Adman Wilbur Doe about exactly when that practice began. I work for an agency called BBDO and I'm with the Atlanta office now but I spent many years in the media in New York and I think it really kind of started there with a kind of a Pepsi ad extravaganza that used to happen. Back in the 80s with Michael J Fox and some other Cindy Crawford celebrities like that. Those were the first ads I think that we're really using entertainment as kind of as kind of a they were leading with that in terms of trying to sell. They were entertainment events more than they were commercials that were trying to sell you something. That was kind of the birth of the modern day Super Bowl ads.
So in Wilbur's opinion what works best an ad with a celebrity or a clever, acute story? That's a point that will be debated until the end of time. Is it worth it to buy a celebrity or not? I think in some cases it can pay huge dividends. One of my favorite Super Bowl ads of all time was the Betty White Snickers ad that BBDO New York did and that used the celebrity in exactly the way he wanted it to be used. It was memorable. It was aesthetically funny. It made a clever point about what it's like to be hungry and how Snickers can solve that. It was kind of fired on small cylinders. That was the number one spot of the year that year in the game. So that was a terrific use of celebrity. However, the history is littered with totally forgettable Super Bowl spots that have gigantic celebrities in them that nobody remembers anymore.
You've got to be careful when you hire celebrities. No surprise. There's a lot more that goes into making an ad for the Super Bowl than there is for just a regular campaign. Technically there is no actual difference. However, there's an enormous difference in intensity level when you're talking about the Super Bowl. There's just so much money at stake and so much potential upside in terms of public opinion at stake that they get scrutinized before they ever are seen by the public well beyond what a normal ad approval process requires. Normally you deal with somebody called the Chief Marketing Officer, but on a Super Bowl ad, those get approved by CEOs and then Chairman and then boards of directors. You're going up several rungs above the normal ladder for approval. So whenever you get input, it's not always the best news for a creative idea.
It's very difficult to manage that and try to keep your ideas from getting committed to death. So luckily we had a great client in Carnival who really allowed us to realize the stories as we originally intended. There were four very, very, very different pieces of film. Did he mention Carnival? Yeah, so it's the first time Carnival Corporation ever did a Super Bowl ad or sort of any advertising really as a corporation.
They own several brands, not just Carnival Cruise Lines, but Holland American, Princess and Cunard and Costa and a few others. So they were interested in that kind of hitting different personalities with three or four different commercials. So that's exactly what we did. We showed them a whole bunch of work and we settled on four that we wanted to shoot. And they're all very different. We have a message in a bottle kind of magical story. A little girl finds a message in a bottle on a beach and throws off some kind of a fantasy adventure on a cruise ship.
There's an action adventure story we call Getaway, where a woman kind of leaps out of the dentist's chair and runs through the city and goes away from modern stresses and get to the cruise where her family is. There's a funny spot called Cruise Versions where people are talking and stumble on tonders about their first time. And of course it was this spot that we're not revealing the content of. We shot four really different stories, which is highly unusual. You don't normally get to do that.
Normally you work a lot and you settle on one and you shoot that one. Is there a chance we can see these ads somewhere? Yeah, if you go to worldleadingcruiselines.com, you can find all four spots, three of them in their entirety and then a teaser for the mystery spot. And you can view them as videos and then you can vote on which one you think is worthy of the big game. All right, so the big question, what should we be watching for on Sunday night?
You know, I mentioned Fickers before. Fickers is back in the game after being gone a few years. M&M's was in the game the last few years, but M&M Mars decided to put stickers back in the game. They've got a teaser out now for their spot to take off on the Brady Bunch TV series. It looks terrible. So I'm going to be looking for that one. And Energy B-Video in Chicago did a terrific kind of 90 second spot for Bud Light where they took a real guy and they surprised him by putting him in a giant Pac-Man game.
He's a human Pac-Man which is a very big and spectacular kind of spot. And what those two are definitely going to be true to watch in addition to Carnival, of course. All right, you heard it here. Good luck to both teams, of course. And meanwhile, pass the nachos and grab that remote. Here comes another commercial. You know what to expect here? It's the latest in pop culture.
The second piece of casting is in place for the new Supergirl show from CBS. Mikad Brooks will play the role of Jimmy Olsen, you know him, from a recurring role as Eggs on True Blood a couple of seasons back. The award-winning miniseries The White Queen from Stars has now found a home online. Amazon is signed to deal with Stars Digital Media making prime inst in video the exclusive US home for the Emmy-nominated 10-part miniseries. NBC is moving forward with their reboot of Heroes, Heroes Reborn, but Zachary Guino says he won't be coming back to the series.
The actor who played the siler in the original run of episodes said that he did get an offer from creator Tim Kring to join the reboot but will not be coming back. And an almost related note from over the weekend, Todd McFarlane on his Facebook page said that he would never draw for DC or Marvel again. Unless it was a project that involved Spawn that would be mutually beneficial to both parties. He said he had no intention of doing any projects that didn't involve his character. Patrick J. Adams is back playing the smart witty Mike Ross on the USA top rated series Suits.
The show is winding down with just a few more episodes left in this season and I ask Pat what we can expect to see. We're going to pick up right where we left off with Lewis Litt having found out the secret that we've been keeping from him for the last four years. And the consequences of it are pretty heavy. He obviously wants his name on that door on the wall rather and he's not going to hold or he's not going to pull any punches or hold back at all now that he has this leverage. So you're going to watch a scrambling law firm trying to deal with the ramifications of having kept a secret from him for so long.
So how has Mike Ross evolved since the first time we met him? I think he's done a lot of growing up. I think when we found Mike he was a puppy. I think we referred to him as such. You know this was a character who was dropping folders and spilling coffee and coming to work stoned and just didn't know what he was doing.
And now I think that you see a much more pulled together, confident young man who's fallen in love, a great relationship or a difficult relationship at times but he's trying and he's doing really well at work. And at some point in the beginning of this season he would love to go and explore other avenues. So I think he's grown up a lot. I think he's matured a lot. And some big guest stars on the way too.
We probably had Eric Roberts in there, right? And Wendell Pierce who's been a favorite on the show for a while. Yeah, Trisha Helfer is going to be on there. I actually worked with her on a pilot many years ago so it was terrific to have her. And we had Neil McDonough as well who's one of our favorites and he's become a cornerstone on the show.
I mean we were so blessed to have such great actors on this series. Pat is also a seasoned photographer and he has a new project that's pretty close to the heart of the show. I've been shooting pictures my entire life really and it's been no different over these last four years with Suits. I've been shooting pretty much since day one. I have pictures literally from my first fitting as Mike Ross all the way up to the most recent episodes.
Obviously posted a lot of stuff on Instagram which is popular with the kids these days. But at the same time also shooting a ton of film and much, you know, and it's really great digital stuff that I'm really proud of. So this has been a great opportunity for me to actually print these images quite large and put them on a gallery wall and invite people to come experience them I think in the best way possible. So outside New York where can we see this? You know we're going to be in a part of discussing that.
I think seeing how people react to it this time around will dictate what we really go and do with that. They'll definitely be available to view online. Some of them already are and they'll be made more available once the show's over. But this I think is really the first step in a series of long steps as far as my photography on the show goes because as a hunger develops for people to see these photos, I'm definitely keeping them organized and we're figuring out the best way to get them to fans. So I think they'll be available and people who want to follow me on Instagram will definitely get a sense of where else to go and look so you can follow me at halfadams on Instagram.
And I'm in the process of building a website too so a lot of that stuff will go up there. So what's next for Patrick? Well in fact we're going to be going back to Suits pretty soon. We've been on hiatus here for a little while and I've been working up some of my own stuff and getting this gallery up. But we go back to shoot season five in late March and hopefully I'll be directing more episodes this year.
I got to direct my first episode towards the end of the fourth season and it was really one of the most positive experiences I've had in a long time. So I'm hoping they let me behind the camera again. Catch Patrick in new episodes of Suits every Wednesday on USA. As if for now we're back in a few days. Salt and snow shovels at hand for a trip down to Greenville, Mississippi.
The smallest television market in the country and one that is a home of a new docu-comedy from the guys who gave you the office. You'll get that and more great websites like ComicMix dot com, michaeldavisworld.com, getthepointradio.com and in the iTunes podcast directory. On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram you catch us under The Point and we'll see you back here in a couple of days.
