How Tubi tricked Super Bowl viewers with its devious interruption ad

Do not attempt to adjust your television set. That’s just a Tubi promo messing with you. While scores of advertisers mostly used celebrities to grab attention on Sunday’s Super Bowl, the Fox-owned streaming service Tubi did so with a clever end-around that had viewers initially wondering what had happened to their TVs during the fourth quarter of the game, which aired on Fox. This year’s winning ad went to the dogs. The Farmer’s Dog spot ranked first in USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter, which asks the public to rate ads online with a score from 1 to 10. Read: Ad Age ranks the Top 5 Super Bowl 2023 ads The pet food company’s 60-second spot features the long life of Bear, a chocolate Labrador who grows up alongside his owner from childhood to her having her own family as an adult. The ad, which was directed in-house, is set to Lee Fields’ classic song, “Forever.” The commercial won with an average score of 6.56 out of 10. The promo, devised by the agency Mischief, opened on Fox Sports announcers Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen, who were calling the game. As they were talking, the screen suddenly shifted to what looked like a smart TV interface, with somebody clicking around and launching the Tubi app—then selecting the movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” to watch. A few seconds after that, the Tubi logo flashed, making clear it had been a promo all along. Viewers generally praised the brand on social media—even those who felt punked by it were laughing, for the most part. Tubi just got folks punched and tv remotes thrown okay that tubi commercial scared the shit out of me i was like MY TV HASBEEN HACKED!!! god i'm turning into a boomer That Tubi commercial had everyone in the living room near the remote like pic.twitter.com/GrW0btn0Kp Half the country just yelled “who the fuck has the remote” at that Super Bowl commercial @Tubi A ‘playful hack’ For Tubi, it was mission accomplished. The brand certainly got noticed on Sunday, not just for the prank ad but also for its 60-second rabbit-hole spot. That ad ended up winning the Super Clio—a trophy handed out by the Clio Awards to the night’s best spot, as judged by a panel of top industry creatives. “Since day one, my primary objective was to make sure our Super Bowl debut was not lost in the crowded Super Bowl ad landscape or seen as forgettable,” Tubi chief marketing officer Nicole Parlapiano told Ad Age after the final whistle Sunday night. “Having our brand consistently in the top eight trending on Twitter for Super Bowl LVII, and in the top five during the game—and the only brand—right under ‘Eagles,’ ‘Chiefs’ and ‘Rihanna’ is just such incredible validation of the work and vision that our teams at Tubi and Mischief partnered on.” Parlapiano described the execution as a “playful hack” and said the brand wasn’t overly worried about seriously confusing viewers. “It was intentionally so short and fun that it quickly alleviates any real concern,” she said. “Internally, we all saw it for what it was: a brilliant engagement hack that further shows our creative capacity and brand personality.”Watch Tubi's Super Bowl commercial teasers “We wanted to do something simple that stopped people in their tracks while also serving as a product demo,” added Greg Hahn, co-founder and chief creative officer at Mischief. “Having the Fox Super Bowl LVII announcers be a part of it to make it feel real was something too good to pass up.” The best and worst Super Bowl ads Ad Age reviews the Big Game commercials Click here Misdirecting viewers by using the game’s announcers at the beginning of an ad has been done before. Tide pioneered the approach in 2017 when Terry Bradshaw hyped the halftime show with a ketchup stain on his shirt—which turned out to be a pre-filmed teaser for the brand’s Super Bowl spot. And on Sunday night, the NFL itself used a fake interview between sideline reporter Erin Andrews and flag football star Diana Flores to kick off its 90-second spot. Parlapiano called Fox Sports “integral partners” on the Tubi interruption. “They helped us up the ante and partnered with us so we could execute it in the most brand-synergistic way possible,” she said. “They got the vision of what we were trying to do.” At the end of the 15-second execution, the phantom remote-control user ends up deciding to watch “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”—the 2005 film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Hahn said that choice was meant to be another disruptive element. “We wanted it to turn into something that would counter the programming of the Super Bowl and, OK, maybe irritate some people,” he said. “We figured a romcom would do that and Mr. and Mrs. Smith had instant recognizability.” In addition to the interruptive spot, Tubi also aired a 60-second brand ad during the game featuring giant bunnies abducting people and throwing them down rabbit holes—a metaphor for how viewers can get engrossed in Tubi’s large catalog of content. Rather than focus on the platform’s content, though, Tubi wanted its Super Bowl campaign to be a brand play positioning the service as fun and somewhat mischievous—what Hahn described as “a bit of a troublemaker” in the streaming world. “It’s playful and doesn’t take itself too seriously,” he said. “The rabbit hole is about having content that drags you in and you struggle to pull away from. The interruption ad is that idea in action.” Parlapiano said the two spots together were a breakthrough way of showcasing Tubi’s personality. “Early on we decided we didn’t want to anchor our Super Bowl brand marketing campaign with a recognizable face or take a content-focused approach,” she said. “We wanted to help people better understand the emotional connection our users associate with Tubi. We are fun and playful, a little daring, and people can really get lost in the content they love on our platform.”

How Tubi tricked Super Bowl viewers with its devious interruption ad

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