Dr. Umstick helps Eric Andre in Drumstick's Big Game spot... sort of.
Drumstick wants consumers to consider ice cream as a snack, even at 36,000 thousand feet.
The ice cream brand’s inaugural Super Bowl commercial finds comedian Eric Andre in distress on an airplane. When a flight attendant calls for a doctor, Dr. Umstick, Drumstick’s spokesdoll, volunteers, and pulls out his bag filled with Drumsticks on ice…. Not that it really helps Andre, but everyone else starts eating.
“We use humor in our campaign and wanted to find someone who could use their comedic prowess and physical comedy to bring it to life,” Kerry Hopkins, director of marketing at Drumstick, said of casting Andre. “This brought Dr. Umstick to life in a way, and we needed someone who could play off of him.”
Read Ad Age’s interview with Eric Andre
The 30-second spot from Opinionated will run in the third quarter of the Feb. 11 game on CBS. The ad was directed by Jim Jenkins, whose other Big Game ads include Workday’s 2023 “Rockstars” spot and Jeep’s 2020 spot with Bill Murray that brought back “Groundhog Day.”
Drumstick’s first-ever Super Bowl ad comes as the Froneri-owned brand looks to broaden consumers' perceptions of the treat as a snack and attract new customers.
“Drumstick has been around for over 95 years, so we have a lot of people who know the brand latently,” said Hopkins. “But we wanted to show up a bit differently and drive some consumption in the first quarter of the year. The Big Game is a big snacking occasion, and so is Drumstick.”
Drumstick joins other sweets brands Oreo, Reese’s, Lindt and Nerds, which have also confirmed Big Game ads.
The Super Bowl ad will be a continuation of the brand’s “Another Day, Another Drumstick” campaign, also from Opinionated, which centered on a short film that debuted in 2022 showing Dr. Umstick searching for love.
“We had a specific message we wanted to get across—to portray us as a snack and tie in the ‘Another Day, Another Drumstick’ work,” Hopkins said. “The airplane allowed us to get Dr. Umstick into the real world.”
Hopkins said the brand is well aware of the odd humor of the ad.
“We invited that,” she said. “When you are trying to keep the brand relevant with a younger generation, it’s important to take risks and break through the clutter. Our TikTok presence also has a lot of absurdist humor.” It seems to resonate with the brand’s 1.1 million TikTok followers.
