Memories of Our Super Bowl Spots
By John Lux
In 1999, through a good friend of our company, we were approached by one of the million new .com companies with an idea. They wanted to do some spots and air them on the Super Bowl to get traffic to their website. The name of the company was OurBeginning.com and they specialized in announcements/invitations for all types of events. Their tagline was “life is an event, announce it to the world”. Don’t go to the website now, it’s now childhood and early learning organization.
Anyway, our client wanted to drive website traffic and thought the best way to do that was some spots during the most watched event on television. The plan was to do a series of 4 spots, during the pregame and the big spot during the game. The series of spots during the pregame, (“Town Crier”) told a story of a guy making announcements and the locals not liking the interruption. These spots aired about 30 minutes apart during the first 2 hours of the pregame show. The spot during the game (“Angry Brides”) focused on two brides that ended up with the same invitations from a run of the mill wedding invitation printer and mayhem ensues. “Angry Brides” aired at the beginning of the second quarter.
The spots were shot in various locations around the Disney property. The first part of “Town Crier” was shot in the woods that are now where Disney’s Pop Century Resort is located. The second part of “Town Crier” was shot in the UK Pavilion at Epcot. “Angry Brides” was shot on the soundstages of Disney’s Hollywood Studios (known at the time as the Disney-MGM Studios). Then we edited and mixed the spots at our place and shipped the spots to ABC the week before the game.
The other interesting thing about the spots is that a couple weeks before the spots were delivered we were informed by ABC Standards & Practice that the original “Angry Brides” spot was deemed to violent and couldn’t be aired. So we redeveloped the spot a bit, did a toned down version for the game that was approved and then edited an extended spot for the company’s website.
In the end, the spots did their job perfectly. They drove business to the company’s website even more than they had hoped for. The spots were a huge success because we achieved the goal that was given to us. Unfortunately, the spots were not nearly as successful for our client. People went in droves to the website but they didn’t buy stuff. So our client had some great spots, got huge traffic, but they didn’t capitalize with sales. And as you can see by the site being a completely new company, they are not around anymore. The spots are below, make sure you watch the “Town Crier” spots in order. Good memories of the chaos that was, Super Bowl spots.
Town Crier #1:
Town Crier #2:
Town Crier #3:
Town Crier #4:
Angry Brides Super Bowl Spot:
Angry Brides Extended Web Version:
About the Author: John Lux
