Fathers were a big theme in Super Bowl XLIX advertising, as seen in this Dove Men+Care commercial only slightly altered from a version that debuted for Father's Day the year before. Dove Men, a Unilever brand, hadn't been in the big game since its introduction there in 2010 ("Manthem").
"Real Strength" was created out of Davie Brown Entertainment/The Marketing Arm and was based on brand research that found men didn't believe the media adequately reflected their real childcare roles.
"Building on Dove's legacy of realistically portraying women by challenging beauty stereotypes, Dove Men+Care also places the highest value in authentically representing its consumers, so a film showing real fathers exhibiting real strength through the care they show their children was created," a spokeswoman later said. The Super Bowl -- "arguably the epitome of stereotypical male strength and masculinity" -- was picked as the place "to change the conversation, offering a unique position to challenge the traditional notions of what it means to be a man and what it means to be strong."
The result was more than 3.5 billion media impressions, per Dove's count, including an article by Mic.com's "masculinity columnist" headlined "The Super Bowl's Biggest Winner? Healthy Masculinity." (He might have written the same after the increasingly progressive Axe, a Unilever sibling of Dove, came to Super Bowl 50 with "Find Your Magic.")
Director: Rob Meltzer. Production company: Stun Creative. Executive producers: Mark Feldstein, Brad Roth. Line producer: Richard Sven Shelgren. Director of photographer: Eric Haase. Editor: Dayne Tanioka.
Ad agency: The Marketing Arm. Marketing Arm CEO-entertainment: Lewis Henderson. Marketing Arm president-entertainment: Tom Meyer. Senior VP-group creative director: Marc Gilbar. Account director: Meg Quinn. Agency producer: Ben Greenberg.
Media agency: Mindshare.
Music: Extreme Music. Composers: Rhian Sheehan, APRA; Tony Morely, PRS; Rachel Wood, PRS.
PR: Edelman.
BRAND: Dove Men
YEAR: 2015
AGENCY: Davie Brown Entertainment/Marketing Arms
SUPERBOWL: XLIX
QUARTER AIRED: Q2
