Sprint's 30-second spot by Droga5 in Super Bowl LI uses humor to highlight just how far customers will go to get out of their Verizon contracts. It came two years after Sprint's most recent Super Bowl commercial, in which it "apologized" to Verizon and AT&T ("Apology").
The 2017 ad shows a man pushing his car off of a cliff, then telling his children, "Well, kids, Daddy's dead." Sprint customer and former Verizon spokesman Paul Marcarelli sees the exchange and says to the father, "Let me guess. Faking your own death to get out of your Verizon contact? You could've just switched to Sprint."
Although Verizon didn't advertise in Super Bowl LI, "Car" meant Sprint did go up against T-Mobile, which wasn't messing around with its ad buy: It ran three minutes of commercial time in the game across four spots ("#UnlimitedMoves," "#BagofUnlimited," "#Punished" and "#NSFWireless.")
"Car," however, got the last word: It re-aired when the Super Bowl went into overtime for the first time in 51 years.
Sprint's Super Bowl advertising dates back to 1990's "A New World," which used Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution to dramatize the power of voice.
Director: Randy Krallman. Production company: Smuggler. Executive producer: Shannon Jones. Producer: Ian Blain. Production supervisor: Chris Lane. Director's assistant: Rainer Hunt.
Droga5 executive creative director: Matt Ian. Creative directors: Daniel Kelly, Todd Rone Parker. Executive producer: Ross Plummer. Associate producer: Caroline Vassiliades. Account director: Kelly Harrington.
VFX/color/design: The Mill. VFX/design senior producer: Colin Blaney. Production coordinator: Casey Sincic. 2D lead/ VFX supervisor: Chris Sonia. 2D artists: Ari Garber, Ting Jung-Hsu, Rob Meade. Color producer: Natalie Westerfield. Coordinator: Elizabeth Nagle. Colorist: Mikey Rossiter.
Editorial: Mackcut. Editor: Gavin Cutler. Producer: Gina Pagano.
BRAND: Sprint
YEAR: 2017
AGENCY: Droga5
SUPERBOWL: LI
QUARTER AIRED: Q2