The spot, done by Martin Mercado, Y&R Argentina's creative director,
and production company Landia, captures random acts of kindness and
bravery on genuine footage taken by security cameras around the
world.
"This is a great creative piece that exemplifies Coca-Cola's
core values and what makes the brand so special," said a Coke
spokeswoman, noting that the work "made a splash" at the London
Olympics last July. "It is a top performing ad that resonates very
well across a broad audience."
Unlike spots that are often created for the Super Bowl, Coke
already knew it had a crowd pleaser with "Security Camera."
Guido Rosales, who nurtures innovative creative work as Coke's
Latin America advertising strategy and integrated marketing
communications director, noted in a post on a Coca-Cola blog "We
posted the spot on YouTube, and introduced it to our Fan First
program, distributing it across our Coke fans on Facebook in Latin
America. It was only available online, and not supported by a media
or advertising buy. And it just took off. Within weeks, it had
racked up more than six million views from every corner of the
world."
"Security Camera" is a big change from Coca-Cola's entry in last
year's Super Bowl, three spots by Wieden & Kennedy
Portland, each featuring Coke's infamous polar bears watching the
football game. This year, a Wieden spot called "Mirage" that urged
viewers to go to CokeChase.com and vote for one of three teams
racing across a desert won three stars in Ad Age's review of this
year's Super Bowl spots, compared to top marks of four stars for
"Security Camera."
In other offerings from overseas, a spot by BBH London for Unilever's Axe body spray for men
called "Lifeguard" garnered three-and-a-half stars from Ad Age.
BBH's London office has a long tradition of creating popular
international Axe spots that run around the world, so the U.K.
agency wasn't a surprising choice to create Axe's first-ever Super
Bowl spot.
The other two ads created in London didn't fare as well.
BlackBerry's first Super Bowl ad introduced the BlackBerry Z10.
BBDO said the spot was done by its London office, AMV BBDO, because AMV
is the global lead agency for BlackBerry and the account is run
from London, where the new Z10 is already on sale.
BlackBerry's "My new BlackBerry" spot scored a meager 1.5 stars
in Ad Age's review, and the other spot created in London, Beck's
Sapphire "Serenade" with a singing goldfish by Mother London, was
the only of 41 ads reviewed to score a single star.
See all the spots
here.
This year's trend toward sourcing more Super Bowl creative from
agencies outside the U.S. may have more staying power than one
trend from last year: creating Super Bowl ads inhouse. That was
done by five marketers last year (not counting Doritos' annual
crowdsourced spot): History Channel, H&M, GoDaddy, Teleflora
and Careerbuilder. This year, only one of the 41 Super Bowl spots
was done inhouse, Wonderful Pistachios' ad with Gangnam Style's
Psy.