Zendaya sells seashells in Squarespace's Super Bowl commercial

Squarespace's star-studded Super Bowl spot will feature singer Zendaya as "Sally," the spirited saleswoman and tongue-twister extraordinaire who’s best known for selling seashells by the seashore. The alliterative 30-second commercial reimagines the classic schoolyard chant “Sally Sells Seashells,” with the titular entrepreneur getting a much-needed sales boost after opening an online store using Squarespace’s suite of web design tools. It’s narrated by André Benjamin—better known as André 3000, one half of the famous hip-hop duo Outkast. Benjamin also makes a brief cameo on screen at the end of the spot. Get the latest Ad Age Super Bowl 2022 news here. The Super Bowl campaign is the first to be developed by the company's Los Angeles-based in-house creative team, which the website design company established last year. It was directed by filmmaker Edgar Wright, who has also directed his fair share of Hollywood films including “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” and “Baby Driver.” “Each and every year, the Super Bowl is the one singular opportunity where we get to showcase our story and creativity to hundreds of millions of people in one silver bullet,” said David Lee, the company’s chief creative officer. Sunday’s new spot with Zendaya will mark the eighth Super Bowl appearance for Squarespace, which has appeared in the game almost every year since 2014. “We’re a brand that tries to do something different each year,” Lee said. Titled “Everything to Shell Anything” in a riff on the company’s latest “Everything to Sell Anything” brand campaign, the commercial follows a few fairly consistent themes evident in Squarespace’s Big Game ads: it banks on celebrity appearances, it embraces what’s come to be known as “hustle culture,” and it was created in-house—albeit being the first out of its new L.A. office. Last year’s commercial, which was also done in-house, featured a “5 to 9” remake of Dolly Parton’s hit song “9 to 5,” which threw the spotlight on consumers who use Squarespace to promote their side hustles. to showcase the creative work of those who promote their side hustles on Squarespace websites. The year before that, its in-house team crafted an ad showing Winona Ryder creating a “Welcome to Winona” website on the side of the road outside Winona, Minnesota. See which brands are buying ads in Super Bowl 2022. In the years since its 2014 Super Bowl debut, the brand has also created other big-budget Super Bowl ads starring the likes of Keanu Reeves, John Malkovich, Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele. The company has worked with a handful of external agencies including Wieden+Kennedy and Anomaly on past Super Bowl campaigns, though it has handled every Big Game spot internally since 2018. Squarespace’s upcoming spot, which will air in the first quarter of Sunday’s L.A. Rams-versus-Cincinnati Bengals matchup, will air nationally in the U.S. as well as in the U.K. and Canada—a market that has been deprived of most American Super Bowl ads in recent years due to changes in its broadcasting regulations. Hear more about Super Bowl ad plans on the latest episode of Marketer's Brief. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, check us out on Spotify and hear us on Stitcher. This is our RSS feed. Tell a friend!

Zendaya sells seashells in Squarespace's Super Bowl commercial

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