Procter & Gamble to debut mixed-reality ad for 'Monday Night Football'

Procter & Gamble Co. will temporarily turn Gillette Stadium into "GilletteLabs Stadium" in a 45-second mixed-reality pre-game segment announced by Joe Buck and Troy Aikman just before the kickoff of tonight’s Chicago Bears-New England Patriots game on ESPN. The "Monday Night Football" segment planned for 8:07 p.m. ET is designed both to showcase upgrades coming to the stadium and P&G’s GilletteLabs with Exfoliating Bar signature product, showing a razor being constructed before viewers' eyes, as the field is darkened except for a green glow. The effort—created by The Famous Group, Culver City, California, and done in partnership with the NFL and The Kraft Group, which owns the Patriots—also aims to show renovations coming to the stadium, for which Gillette has had naming rights for more than two decades, And, of course, it aims to showcase Gillette innovation by showing off its top-of-the-line product. “It’s a way for us to showcase how GilletteLabs is truly at the forefront of innovation and technology for men’s grooming, not only with our products, but also with our marketing efforts,” said John Claughton, VP of North American grooming for P&G, in a statement. As Andrew Isaacson, exec VP of business development for Famous Group, described in an interview, it will be a fairly involved event compared to other mixed-reality on sports broadcasts. It starts with a Patriot mascot bursting through the locker room door, flipping a GilletteLabs switch that turns everything in the stadium green, cutting to a wide shot of the south end zone area currently under renovation, Isaacson said. While it will still show the stadium under construction, it will also show a preview of a new video board with a lighthouse that shines a light to the middle of the field, causing the Patriots logo to flip and reveal a “strange silver base” upon which pieces will come together to build a GilletteLabs razor with a green exfoliating bar. “And then, of course, that leads into Joe Buck and Troy Aikman saying, ‘OK, wow, welcome everybody to the new GilletteLabs Stadium here on Monday Night Football.’” Isaacson said the segment is basically an extension of an existing ad buy to integrate into the live broadcast. “What we did was we took that 30-second spot and made it into this new hybrid live commercial,” Isaacson said. The event joins a mini-trend of mixed-reality ads popping into sports over recent months—some of which went better than others. Chipotle did a mixed-reality stunt to spring a surprise on viewers of a Stanley Cup playoff game between the Colorado Avalanche and St. Louis Blues in May, which made it appear a gigantic gloved hand broke through the ice to grab a burrito bowl—all merged into live programming during a commercial break. HBO Max got more mixed reviews—including from announcer Bob Costas on Warner Bros. Discovery sibling network TBS—for a stunt earlier this month during a New York Yankees-Cleveland Guardians playoff game that had a dragon from the “House of the Dragon” series appearing to fly into Yankee Stadium. The awkward flyover was clearly not one Costas enjoyed being involved with. Bob Costas: "Now, you know, big sellout crowd here, but we weren't 100% sure this game was gonna be played tonight. And for more, it's shocking. Here's Lauren Shehadi..."*'House of the Dragon' promo with CGI dragon flying over Yankee Stadium* pic.twitter.com/EilVXyanuV— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 12, 2022 Famous, which also has done mixed-reality versions of a flying raven at MB&T Stadium in Baltimore and a running Panther for the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, is looking for something that comes off better for tonight’s event. “Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad idea,” Isaacson said of HBO’s Dragon. “But this will be a first-of-its-kind as well. When you actually start to attach our mixed-reality effects to the physical architecture, it goes to another level.” Ad Age Next: CMO Get your tickets for the Dec. 7 event in New York Register here

Procter & Gamble to debut mixed-reality ad for 'Monday Night Football'

Featured Stories