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Hulu, the streaming TV service from NBC Universal, 21st Century Fox and Walt Disney Co., returned to the Super Bowl in 2012 to make a pitch for its paid tier, Hulu Plus.
The creative is similar to the company’s prior Super Bowl outing in 2009 ("Alec in Huluwood"), also by Crispin Porter & Bogusky, but replaces Alec Baldwin with Will Arnett in the role of an alien Hulu operator who descends into the subterranean Huluboratory through Milton Berle’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There he pitches Hulu’s “latest silver bullet,” the paid tier that provides full seasons and series runs for those who’ll pay, “in your new favorite place: everywhere.”
After 2012, Hulu sat out the Super Bowl until 2017, when it returned with a different pitch and perhaps a sign of a maturing business, running an ad for a specific original program, its forthcoming "The Handmaid's Tale."
Speaking of streaming TV, NBC in 2012 became the first TV network to stream the game live online, although Super ads did not come along for the ride. More than 2.1 million people checked out the live stream at some point during the game, NBC said afterward, calling it the “most watched single-game sports event ever online.” (That’s not the same as the standard TV measure average viewers, which would have been much lower for the live stream. An average of 111.3 million watched the game the traditional way.)
BRAND: Hulu
YEAR: 2012
AGENCY: Crispin Porter & Bogusky
SUPERBOWL: XLVI
QUARTER AIRED: Q2