Owens Corning's Pink Panther mascot saves the day on Super Bowl Sunday in this execution of the long-running insulation campaign.

The association with Owens Corning, based in Toledo, Ohio, may have been the most lucrative and, once the film series petered out, the best known. The pink insulation itself didn’t originally arise in the marketing department; red dye was merely added to a new iteration of the company’s insulation, which had been yellow, to differentiate it internally from the old. It turned out to make an impact on consumers as well. “I don’t think we ever realized the power of pink in the marketplace,” Joe Doherty, a former Owens Corning VP for marketing communication, told the Toledo Blade in 2013. “It was about differentiating with customers. Then we realized we had something different on our hands -- it was the color.”

Adding the Panther character was a stroke of genius. By about 1990, surveys by Owens Corning reported that consumers preferred its pink insulation to the next rival by five to one, the Toledo Blade reported.

Owens Corning previously appeared in the Super Bowl in 1979, when the energy crises of that decade helped with the pitch ("Glass House"). The brand would come back to the game after a long stretch in 1996, again with the Pink Panther ("Space Invaders").

Video courtesy of Owens Corning. Used by permission.

BRAND: Owens Corning

YEAR: 1985

SUPERBOWL: XIX