Holiday Inn, named for the 1942 Bing Crosby movie of the same name, makes a commitment on advertising's biggest stage in this 1986 ad featuring the company's then-president Ken Hamlet.
It was created by Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt in New York, which had handled the account since 1983 via predecessor Kenyon & Eckhardt.
Memphis-based parent Holiday Corp. later in 1986 disclosed that Donald Trump had accumulated somewhere between 2% and 5% of its stock. It soon restructured in a bid to fend off any potential takeover, handing $65 per share to stockholders and 10% of its shares to executives by borrowing at least $2.6 billion. Trump's response would sound familiar in tone to voters who followed Trump's pugilistic 2016 campaign for president:
''It is ridiculous and extremely unfair,'' he said, ''that a group of executives who are mediocre at best and incompetent at worst are allowed to get 10 percent of a once great and well-managed company just because they happen to be sitting in a position of control.''
Holiday Inn soldiered on without Trump's help, returning to the Super Bowl in 1997 (with "Bob Johnson," publicizing $1 billion in upgrades) and 1998 (with the droll and charming "Jury Room"). Bass, owner of the Bass beer brand, acquired Holiday Corp. in 1988. It later became the first hotel chain to accept bookings directly through its website. In the late 2000s, its parent by then, Intercontinental Hotels Group, instituted another another extensive upgrade to thousands of Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotels.
BRAND: Holiday Inn
YEAR: 1986
AGENCY: Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon & Eckhardt
SUPERBOWL: XX