Super Bowl Advertising in the Multi-Screen Era with Mark Gross and Chris Bellinger

Orlando Wood (00:21)
Well, listen, thank you guys so much for being on. I'm really excited to talk to you guys. I'm really excited to be doing this special Super Bowl episode right after that's airing right after the Super Bowl. And so I'm psyched to talk to you. You both have such incredible histories in Super Bowl Mark Gross, you are the co-founder and co-chief creative officer of High Dive Ad Agency that's really kind of cut your guys teeth doing a lot of really specialist

Super Bowl work for brands and Chris Bellinger, chief creative officer of PepsiCo Foods USA, who as well, you have an incredible history working on, on Super Bowl spots for, Doritos, for Lay's, you and obviously the great Lay's spot that we will have just seen when this comes out.

during the Super Bowl. So thank you guys both for coming on here. I really appreciate it.

Mark Gross (01:09)
Sure, yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, excited to talk Super Bowl always.

Chris Bellinger (01:11)
Yes.

Orlando Wood (01:13)
Yeah, awesome. Well, listen, I mean, I kind of, you guys are kind of real specialists in Super Bowl Mark, especially, you know, in your time, you know, having worked on Bud Light and then, you know, high dive really seems to specialize in Super Bowl spots. Obviously for, for those of us watching, and especially those of us in advertising, what is, it seems that Super Bowl spots have changed a lot over the course of the last, you know, 20 years. you know, it used to be a big.

kind of single spectacle event. now with the advent of social media becomes like a multi-day or multi-week, we're seeing teasers, you know, for teasers of the final spot. What's kind of what's changed from your perspective? What made a great Super Bowl ad 20 years ago versus what makes a great Super Bowl ad today?

Mark Gross (01:56)
Yeah, what's interesting that when I started doing spots for for Anheuser-Busch, not as many celebs that certainly has changed. You know, I think you see it's almost par for the course for people using A-list celebs and celebs galore.

In addition, 60s have really been rewarded, I think more now than ever. I remember we used to win Super Bowl a lot with 30 second spots. You rarely see that anymore. A lot of the ones that test well or talked about that people really love seem to be 60s. yeah, listen, the landscape has changed. Like everyone's, you know, on a second device and people talk about the spots before and after they share them. And so social media has changed the game. So obviously we want to maximize that, you know,

people talking about the spot three weeks before and three weeks after. So we're creating content and things that people can share rather than just the spot alone. We used just never do that. We would do our 30s, you'd air it on a game and people would talk about it the USA Today for a day after and that was it. And then it would peter out, so.

Orlando Wood (02:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny. Gary Vee just the other day was kind of saying that, you know, for his money, even at, you know, $8 million per 30 second spot, the Super Bowl is still the most value you can get in media. Do you feel that that's still true?

Mark Gross (03:12)
I'll kick that to Bell maybe, yeah.

Chris Bellinger (03:15)
Yeah, mean, listen, we've joked about this is everyone actually hates advertising. That's harsh truth. Everyone is actively trying to avoid advertising in any way, or form, except for the Super Bowl. The one day a year where you can have as many, if not more people who are excited about the ads than the game and the event itself. So that is an impossible amount of eyeballs to buy and have people actually leaning in and caring about it. So from that perspective,

You know, it really is the, know, it's worth it's weight in gold and having that amount of conversations and what we have. And like Mark said, just the sheer fact that people now talk about these is like movie trailers and movie releases and that we have teasers for commercials ⁓ that kind of put it out there. And we saw the same thing when we did crash Superbowl, you know, 20 years ago where it was all 30 second spots. So we turned them over to consumers to let make them and they were able to win Superbowl. And that was a very formulaic approach.

Orlando Wood (03:47)
Yeah.

⁓ Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (04:10)
but it was really slapstick humor and funny and different. And now we're into these narratives that are being told where people are looking forward to that and having some fun with that. So, you know, the platform continues to evolve, I think with the population.

Mark Gross (04:20)
And I was just going to say the market speaks for itself. mean, I think costs keep going up because it's so valuable and it is so successful and you get such ROI that you

people are willing to pay the exorbitant cost. My creative partner Chad always said, there are no losers on the game really. Even if one of your spots, and we all go by the ad meter USA Today, if you come in 49th, like Bell said, you have so many eyeballs watching it and seeing the spot and people, that's all they care about during the day. One day they wanna watch ads, so there are no losers. It's so valuable to have your spot on the game, yeah.

Orlando Wood (04:48)
Hmm

you've got the spot, you've you're paying for the spot. But then as well, all of the teasing and the amplification and the, you know, the the weeks going into it. I mean, we're already seeing teasers coming out now. We're two weeks out as the date of this recording. We're two weeks out from the Super Bowl and we're already seeing teasers come out. Instacart just came out.

going into that media buy is respecting and amplifying the moment itself?

Chris Bellinger (05:27)
It's tough. mean, working with our PR partners, working with our cross agency functionals, trying to anticipate what everybody else is going to do when they're going to drop their things. Because the worst thing you do is drop your spot at the same time someone drops a better spot. And so it's also a little bit of luck. And like how far in advance do you want to go? Do you want it to be more of a surprise for people during game day? Do you want it to be totally saturated? So by the time people see it on game day, they're like, yeah, I heard about this. I saw this. Someone sent it to me already.

Orlando Wood (05:40)
Hmm.

Chris Bellinger (05:54)
All that kind of goes into your calculation on what's the story and narrative you're trying to tell and how far in advance do you go out to make sure that people can see it or how far do you hold it back so that you're now talked about on game day because you're the only spot no one's seen yet. So now you have this element of surprise and delight and like live sports is still one of the few areas where people are actively watching versus the era of streaming where everybody is, know, binging when they have the time to do it.

Orlando Wood (06:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark Gross (06:22)
Yeah, there are two schools of thought and it's hold your spot for the game.

like Bell was talking about or release it early and get people talking. But it depends on our other clients. We used to work with Rocket Mortgage and Casey Herbus, who was the CMO at the time, he wanted to hold his spot and have people watch him in the big game. And he did not want to release the spot early. And we never did the three times we did Super Bowl for them. But I'd say the majority of our clients now, 95%, air the spot early.

Orlando Wood (06:40)
Mm. Mm.

And yeah, I mean, does that put more of an onus on having a celebrity in your spot? You can get more juice for your, pre-roll strategy or PR plan.

Chris Bellinger (06:59)
Yeah, mean, listen, we've always

said, is your idea the celebrity or does the celebrity make your idea better? And I think those are two different approaches where an idea that works with or without the celebrity and the celebrity just makes it that much bigger or more interesting or better, then it makes a ton of sense. I think where you see a lot of the ideas fall flat is when the celebrity is the idea.

And it's kind of one where, you we've even heard it on social media where people feel like we've gotten over saturated on celebrities. They're now expecting them to be in everything. So it's no longer a big, wow, I can't believe they got XYZ to be a part of it because there's a celebrity in every single ad. So in a bit, now you're seeing a bit of a turn to where not seeing a celebrity in an ad is actually a huge shock. And I think that's what we saw last year with Lays with Little Farmer.

Orlando Wood (07:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (07:45)
was it didn't have a celebrity. And instead it had this

Orlando Wood (07:45)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Chris Bellinger (07:47)
adorable girl growing a potato. And I think that's why it really resonated with a ton of people is because it was a story from a brand that they didn't expect it. They expected kind of a slapstick chip spot, which is what we've done for Doritos in the past and what we've done for Cheetos. And instead took it in this really cool narrative about like where potatoes come from and how they make potato chips and multi-generational family farms. And I think that really resonated with people because at that point it was so different than everybody else's.

Orlando Wood (07:50)
Mm Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Mark Gross (08:15)
agree with you know with Bell said earlier I think the biggest mistake a lot of brands make is they just put a celeb in thinking that that's what what's gonna make it good it'll work on a teaser it'll work to get people's attention but if that spot isn't good on the game no one will really care it won't do anything so you know Bell was exactly right in that what's that amazing story that amazing insight that you're telling because people want to see good stories on the game

Orlando Wood (08:26)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm

Yeah, there are great moments like the the Arnold State Farm spot where you get to do both at the same time. You know, it's it's that spot doesn't really work without him, but it's a great execution of that thing where he gets to be in on the joke. We get to be in on the joke with him. It was that was one of the best ones, I think, last year.

Mark Gross (08:59)
Yeah, the scariest thing is to have a spot that relies

on the one celebrity and then if they don't listen a lot of them don't want to participate. They don't like, you know, the script and you're left holding the bag. So, you know, for instance, we did Rocket Mortgage back in the day and we used Momoa. We could have used someone who was fit and had muscles and we had a lot of names, you know, as options. We were very glad to use Momoa. It worked out really well. His career was ascending at the time. And so it got us a lot of talk value. But yeah, you're in trouble if you're

Orlando Wood (09:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Mark Gross (09:34)
write a spot around a celeb and they don't want to do it.

Orlando Wood (09:35)
Yeah.

this year's Lays spot, I'm a sucker for a emotive spot. I was tearing up. what also felt nice is what you sort of started with last year's Lays spot

It almost felt like a continuation of that spot with while feeling very different. it's so emotional. It seemed a very strong choice. I feel like, you know, to to be a big game spot and to go for that level of emotion. Does that feel like a risk to you guys when you're when you're concepting it? Or did it feel very natural?

Mark Gross (10:07)
Do you wanna answer that bell first or do me to go?

Chris Bellinger (10:09)
Sure,

yeah, I I can tell you from evaluating of the creative, it's always intimidating because it's one of those of, it's easy to get emotional about something that you're already really deeply involved in. And so taking it from fresh eyes though and saying, is anyone gonna care on the backside? Like we understand, cause you've heard, know, anything you've developed and Mark knows this, but you get into this writing flow when you're coming up with ideas and to you, you've connected all the dots and all the emotional threads.

and then at the time you present it, everyone just stares at you, because they haven't gone down that same emotional journey that's been going on. So telling an emotional story in 30 or 60 seconds is really challenging. And it's how can you hit those like hero's journey beats in the right ways at the right moments that's not too much that it gets overwhelming, but it's enough that it's actually pulling out those emotions from you. And just like you said, you get a little teary eyed, like that's hard to do in a two hour movie, much less 60 seconds in the middle of a football game.

Orlando Wood (10:41)
Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark Gross (11:05)
And it, I mean, it, were probably surprised it did as well as it did last year. Again, Bell makes a great point. We were all very close to it, but you know, there are a lot of people trying to make a lot of noise on the game and tell a lot of big jokes. And so I think, even though I think the story is what made it so special and the fact that it was a real story and it should,

a story about these generations of farmers that grow the potatoes. It's quietness helped it stand out in the sea of madness. I will say it's always a risk. It's a risk to try to do great comedy and to do serious spots as well, because your jokes could bomb and...

Chris Bellinger (11:42)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Gross (11:47)
you could create a spot that doesn't elicit emotion when you're going for something emotional. So it's really how you tell that story. know, Free Delay came to us, Bell and team and Denise, and it was was their idea to do a second wave of this. And that was what they you know, what the assignment was. And so it was a great idea. And hopefully, hopefully we do as well as we did last year.

Orlando Wood (11:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, because it's. Yeah, yeah, please, please. That'd be great. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (12:07)
Yeah, mean, a fun story, sorry, real quick, just a fun story on when this first came about even last year was

we weren't going in trying to make a potato story last year. We actually had other ideas that we were full in on and were making. And then it was kind of a last minute push from our leadership to be like, well, what if you told a homegrown story? And we're like, on the Super Bowl? Are we sure about this? Like, we want to talk about potatoes? Because you know, a lot of people don't know that potato chips are made by potatoes.

Mark Gross (12:21)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (12:28)
Right. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (12:34)
And real potatoes. And so it was just one of those of, how do you do this? Either you make them cry or you make them laugh. And Lays has never been in the make them cry category. We just never have. And so I think we all kind of looked at each other a little bit saying, like, hey, we can try to do this. But I don't know if it's going to work. And then once we shot it and once we did it and saw the edit, I remember the first time I saw the edit and I said, shit, this is what we're doing. Like, we're all in on this now. And we are going to go all in. And we did a 60 and it paid off huge.

Orlando Wood (12:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (13:02)
but it was just because it turns out this story even kind of took us by surprise because we weren't expecting it. And I think that's why it resonated with so many people. And that kind of then set this whole new trajectory for the Lays Re stage and everything that we're bringing pushing forward and how we led to last harvest this year. So it's kind of been a little bit of a happy accident, but that's, think, where some of the best creative breakthroughs happen is you kind of tilt your head a little bit and say, well, why not? Let's give it a shot.

Orlando Wood (13:06)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And do you know going in? mean, obviously you're producing tons of content all year round, sometimes you're like, we think this might be our Super Bowl ad, but we've also got these backups potentially. I mean, did you know that the little farmer was going to be your Super Bowl ad from conception or did you choose it? Yeah, I figured. Right.

Chris Bellinger (13:41)
No, no, anyone who tells you otherwise is straight up lying. Yeah, no, absolutely not. We

were gonna go with more of a traditional. Yes, yeah, because I mean, we shot it. Remember, Mark, we shot this thing, what, the second week in January last year. So who goes into a Super Bowl spot thinking you're gonna shoot two weeks before the game starts?

Orlando Wood (13:48)
So was in the offline where you finally went, actually, I think this is our one. Well, that's great.

Mark Gross (13:58)
Yeah, we were late.

Orlando Wood (13:58)
Wow.

Mark Gross (14:03)
Yeah, yeah, we had we had that backup which actually aired, which was our matrix spot to focus on a lot of different flavors. And that spot was we love that spot as well. But I think once we saw the edit for Little Farmer.

Chris Bellinger (14:08)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (14:09)
Right.

Mark Gross (14:17)
Bell and team and Frito-Lay said, yeah, we got to go with that. They were really happy the way it came out, but we were scared. We were scared when they gave us the assignment. We were like, okay, we'll do a potato story. And you know, the assignment was, there was a lot of ways you can go at it, that we went at it. I think when we showed Bell and team work, was probably 10 scripts we showed. We can go at it this way, we can go at it this way. Just a lot of ways to tell that unique.

Orlando Wood (14:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (14:23)
Yeah.

Mark Gross (14:45)
potato farm story.

Orlando Wood (14:47)
Yeah, and then it was an unexpected hit. mean, I think it was number two on USA's list of best Super Bowl spots, wasn't it? I so that that must have. Yeah, sorry.

Chris Bellinger (14:54)
Yeah, just keep rubbing it in. Yeah, that one hurt. Lost by .01. .01 we lost

to our friends over at Budweiser.

Mark Gross (15:03)
It hurts. It hurt. ⁓

Orlando Wood (15:06)
well,

I'm sorry. I was here to applaud you on that, but you're right. I I do see what you mean.

Mark Gross (15:13)
If my aunt

Nancy had just voted, we would have won.

Orlando Wood (15:15)
Right.

But yes, how does that work? I how many how far in advance do you buy your Super Bowl media? Then if you if you still had that ability to choose, you know, from the offline, which probably if you shot it early January, offline's probably getting to you third week of January. I mean, you're you're a couple of weeks out. That's without, you know, post and finishing. I mean.

Yeah, how much flexibility do you have? mean, and how much media do you have to have already bought to have that freedom to choose at that late stage?

Chris Bellinger (15:49)
So I mean, we're notorious for being a part of the Super Bowl, big partners of the NFL and all the networks and everything. So we usually secure our time ahead of time. And so we know we have 60 seconds, 90 seconds, whatever the amount of time is gonna be. And then we kind of go from there as we start to work through the creative process on, all right, are we using these as 30s or 60s and how are we gonna approach it? And it's what's in service of the brand more so than anything else. And what are our priorities as an organization that we're gonna be focusing on this year?

Orlando Wood (16:17)
And so was there a moment you looked at the little farmer and when. You know what, let's wait it because it's an emotive story. Let's wait it and give it the 30 rather than giving it the 60. Would did you have that conversation or that concern?

Chris Bellinger (16:32)
Yeah, we did because there's obviously multiple priorities that happen each year. And I think once we saw Little Farmer come through, it was just a story that needed to be told in 60 seconds. And that's really what it came down to was the reviewing of it and saying, hey, instead of

Orlando Wood (16:33)
Right.

Ahem.

Chris Bellinger (16:51)
hitting multiple priorities over the course of two thirties, let's tell a really great emotional story for the biggest brand in the world with a 60. And let's do it in a really emotional, great way. And it was just shot by Tyco TV and it was just done so well that you were so in captivating. Like it didn't feel like a 60. And so that was a really serious conversation we had to have, you know, behind closed doors as an organization on is this what we're doing and are we sure this what we want to do?

Orlando Wood (17:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mark Gross (17:18)
And on the agency side, we're biting our nails and praying that our spot gets on. Because, know, Frito-Lay, they have a lot of great partners they work with, and sometimes it's a different brand, you know, that they want to put on the game. And so, yeah, we're always a little nervous sometimes. But, yeah, we lucked out.

Chris Bellinger (17:22)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (17:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And did you get, Mark, do you have those moments of being cynical and going, well, surely they're not gonna, we really love and believe in, you know, the little farmer, but they're probably gonna go with the comedy player. They're probably gonna go with, you know, something else. you have those private moments? Or we can mute Chris if you don't want him to hear.

Mark Gross (17:54)
You know, we do, but it's, you know, I've been in the business long enough to know that the ball bounces so many different ways. There's so many factors that go into the decisions and...

You know, listen, we heard one year again, I keep bringing up rocket, but evidently they had a spot that, we still don't know all the details that they were down the road in a celeb and they went up canceling and they called us late after post Thanksgiving. They used to call us before Thanksgiving and we won the spot, you know, and so that was the third year we worked with them. So no, we understand why the decisions are made and there's so many different priorities and business problems that

Frito-Lay's trying to solve but we can't say that we're not nervous and mad if we don't get it on because you know to be part of the Super Bowl is so special but again there's so many variables in advertising you just never know sometimes you can't control those things we try our best to worry about what we can control.

Orlando Wood (18:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

you know, how do you think differently about strategy and creative for a Super Bowl ad if you know it's likely to be? I mean, I imagine that, you know, from a strategic standpoint, sure, there are these happy accidents like the little farmer But when you

get the brief or you really have a sense that, okay, this is likely to be Super Bowl creative. Does that change the way strategically you come at the brief or does it change the way you come at it creatively?

Mark Gross (19:09)
You know, as an agency, Chad and I always say no, because our theory and what we try to do is always just tell incredible stories. And we're doing that, whether it's regular work we want to do with Frito-Lay or work that goes in the Super Bowl. Now,

Listen, celebrities become a factor. so sometimes that isn't the budgets aren't there necessarily during the year. So you have to factor factor that in. But, we talked about this earlier in the podcast, it's idea and strong strategy first and what we want to say about the brand, what we want consumers to feel and what we want to convey. And that's number one. And I think whether you air it during the regular year or air during the Super Bowl, it's going to do the same. think brands and not Frito-Lay, other brands make the mistake

of swinging too hard in the game. You know, they get all psyched up for Super Bowl. They try to take big swings and they try to be loud and they think that a celebrity's gonna carry the story and a lot of times they miss. ⁓ And I think that's one thing Frida Leite does well where they don't. I don't know if Billy have anything to add to that question.

Orlando Wood (20:07)
Hmm.

Chris Bellinger (20:12)
I mean,

no, you kind of nailed it. Like the reality is it's still got to be a good idea. At the end of the day, it has to be a good idea and it has to be able to stay on its own. And the only difference is 200 million people are going to be forced to watch it. And so does it live up to that kind of, you know, criteria? Obviously, we don't want to air something that's boring on the Super Bowl, because there is a there is a nature of the platform itself. And it's are using the platform for awareness or use it for entertainment or use it for brand building. Those are all different questions you have. So

Orlando Wood (20:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bellinger (20:40)
when we approach a product innovation on the Super Bowl very differently than we approach a branded spot on the Super Bowl. And that's just because we have different things we have to say during it. But at end of the day, it's still gotta be a spot that's worthy of putting on the Super Bowl. ⁓

Orlando Wood (20:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bellinger (20:55)
Those are kind of the things that we look at when we talk about what's gonna go on and when we evaluate who is gonna get the Super Bowl slots like we've seen before, we've talked about whether it's Doritos and Lays or Cheetos or Flamin' Hot or PGS, which is the portfolio. All those discussions go into, okay, who is gonna get, know, literally this prime time placement of advertising.

Orlando Wood (21:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mark Gross (21:17)
I'll tell one very quick fun story. Back in the day, Fran has a Bush and you know, they had the good sense to hold the spot, but we shot some spots that was a regular round of work that we think we shot in September and August the 4th loved it so much, put it on the shelf and said we're going to wait for Super Bowl and he held it all the way until February and it did quite well in the game. And so there was an instance where we just writing regular regular spot trying to be as funny as we could be and they saved it and put it on the game so.

Orlando Wood (21:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

there are undeniable things that are so Super Bowl centric. Like I'm thinking the Fritos, the Twas the Night Before with Marshawn, you know, and Peter Berg directed it. Yeah, it was the night before the Super Bowl. How I spaced on that last bit, I don't know. What was the Twas the Night Before what? But, know, it's, you know, that Peter Berg directed it. was, you know, and, you know, that is.

Chris Bellinger (21:55)
Yeah, it was the night before Super Bowl. Yeah. ⁓

Yeah

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Orlando Wood (22:11)
you know, when else are you going to air that during the year? You know, how do you when you decide to do something like that, how do you decide when to go for the bullseye and go, no, this is going to be we're going to do a big Super Bowl activation that couldn't possibly live anywhere else?

Chris Bellinger (22:26)
Yeah, so that was actually an idea that we launched at football first, back to football. It was towards the night before kickoff. And so we had shot that first series and it took off and did so well in tapping that excitement like the night before Christmas for NFL fans. And it did so well that.

Orlando Wood (22:32)
Right.

Chris Bellinger (22:41)
We actually talked about doing it again for the Super Bowl and we at the time had decided not to because of budget and timing and everything else going on. You know, it was in the middle of COVID. So there was a lot of stress that was happening with things. So over Thanksgiving we kind of killed the idea and walked away from it. And then a couple of weeks later, leadership was like, what are you doing? No.

It was Rachel Fernando said, you're gonna do this. And we were like, okay, I guess we are gonna do this and fired the machine back up and got the band back together. And it was the right call. It was perfect. mean, it built on everything in such a cool, unique storytelling perspective. And it gave people exactly what it is that they wanted and tapping into fans and having fun around that and the excitement before the Super Bowl. ⁓

Orlando Wood (23:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bellinger (23:23)
and it just felt like it made sense. And it was one, like you said, this is the time you can't do it at another time. So why let that opportunity to go when people are actually looking forward to these types of things and are excited by it? And the cast we had was amazing and ended up being, you know, a most talked about spot that year. And the funny thing is it didn't even air in the game.

Orlando Wood (23:26)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Right.

So what's the difference? mean, is there a sort of differentiation? And I'm sort of realizing in this chat how much of it kind of, you you sort of make the decisions a little bit on the fly. But like, what's the difference between an ad that wins on TV versus one that wins on like the Internet and on social?

Chris Bellinger (24:01)
I think it's a huge difference. mean, we've so one we shot earlier this year, spicy but not too spicy with Walton Goggins, which is, you know, around talking about our new flavor, Golden Sriracha. And how do we tap into the fact that there's a lot of tropes that exist that are of adult nature that we would never be able to put on TV. But with the flavors, Golden Sriracha, was spicy, but not too spicy, did amazingly on social media with Walton Goggins or the else we had 300 million organic views across TikTok.

Orlando Wood (24:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, right.

Chris Bellinger (24:29)
And I don't think that would have done the same on a national TV ad because we were able to target the right people in the right context and the right element of when they're viewing it versus, you know, a spotlight little farmer. I don't think does as well on social media by itself without a platform because it's one of those that is a little bit of a slow burn and getting people who are in that mindset to want to watch that story is different.

And so I do think that there's spots that do really, really well on the internet and on social and in those venues. And then there's spots that are really designed for these big stage, real time mass audience. And you've got to take both of those into consideration when you're talking about a spot. Now, obviously, the brass ring is you get one that does both and goes viral everywhere. Like we had one with Breaking Bad that we shot with those guys to bring popcorners where in a new world they didn't make meth, they made popcorners.

Orlando Wood (25:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (25:18)
And

not only did it light the internet on fire, but for the game, it crushed it. And again, that's when we had a 60-second spot that was amazing. But we aired a 30 because it was really good, and it was just a matter of splitting up the priorities that year.

Orlando Wood (25:29)
And it feels like, there are things like the momoa spot is still being memed. that has such a long tail. Can you design for that? Or do you do do you kind of is it just, you know, cross your fingers and pray? Or is there any sort of creative design in that?

Mark Gross (25:44)
It's a little bit of both. think it's a little bit of cross your fingers, a little bit of a plan. You know, think, you know, great spots are always good sound, good visuals, good storytelling. And so I think there we knew we had a great visual and that that would catch on.

that itself was like, my god, Jason Momoa without muscles being skinny. And so we kind of had an inkling that that would would and you you feed that too. So we put out some of our our own memes and you try to you try to throw gas on the fire and then hope that it takes off. So it's a little bit of both a little bit of planning a little bit. Hopefully this this catches on.

Orlando Wood (26:20)
Well, I say that the biggest cultural impact I'll probably ever have is I did this, the Lipton spot with Kermit drinking the tea that's now been memed a million times. Never could have planned for that. You know, I mean, it's just, you know, how is that ever, you know, going to be something you can, you can allow for, you know, where, where do you guys, know, when you guys are working together, where do agency and brand priorities most often clash?

Chris Bellinger (26:32)
No. Yeah.

Mark Gross (26:33)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (26:45)
when it comes to the Super Bowl, or to put it a better way, what do you guys fight about most often when it comes to a big public spot like the Super Bowl?

Chris Bellinger (26:53)
We're talking about before, we're talking about on set, we're talking about in post. I want to hear this. Go ahead, Mark.

Orlando Wood (26:55)
Bit of everything. I just want to know what fights you guys have.

Hahaha!

Mark Gross (27:04)
You know, I gotta be really, you know, the more exciting story would say that we fought a lot. And I gotta say this theory last year, there really wasn't a lot. It was very collaborative. Again, you know, it's frustrating sometimes you work with brands and they're good at not doing this on Super Bowl, being like, I need more product.

We all know this, make the logo bigger. Don't say this about the brand. We want to say these five things in the spot. And the good thing about working with Frito-Lay and Bell and his team is they know that perfect mix of just good storytelling and where to insert the brand. so that, you know, they're just not having us do things that we often have to do with clients that we're banging our head against the wall.

Orlando Wood (27:38)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Gross (27:47)
I don't know, you may have some Bell, but I think, especially this year, I think we knew, we did it last year, we were in a similar place tonally so we all held hands and knew what we had achieved, but I think casting, okay, I got one last year, casting, we had someone we absolutely loved, Tyka loved, think Bell and team wanted to see a different young girl.

It was frustrating at the time. like, damn it, we loved her. listen, they made us actually, and team chose someone else and she turned out fantastic. And so it was fine. It wasn't a fall in a sword for anything. And sometimes we have those arguments that we really do. think Frito-Lay is great at listening to us and we'll fight the good fight. And if not, we lose that battle, we move on to the next thing. So I don't know if you got any, that one came to mind.

Orlando Wood (28:15)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mark Gross (28:32)
casting but

Chris Bellinger (28:32)
No, I mean, that's a great one.

I think there's the, it's tough because, you know, we're all creatives. And so there's an idea, like the idea you invent in your head is so hard to get off of. And I think that's the way you see the most kind of like tension and conflict is when it's like, but we envisioned it this way. It was like, I hear you, but it doesn't make any sense to an outside perspective of like, why this specific person or this specific line.

Orlando Wood (28:42)
Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (28:56)
or this specific approach, it's like the story is there. So now it's just a matter of what story are we trying to tell from whose perspective. But I think it's all, it's the typical client agency relationship where, you know, everyone, you either say you're trying to be too creative or you're trying to be too business focused. And it's finding the right balance in between. Because at the end of the day, we still need an ad that's going to help sell product and resonate. It can be the most beautiful thing in the world, but if no one remembers what it was for, then it was kind of useless.

Orlando Wood (29:01)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (29:22)
And

so it's finding that good balance between things. And I think the good thing is, like Varn said, we've got a really great relationship between the agency and the teams that everybody knows what it is that we're trying to do. And you can tell when someone's willing to die on a sword or something. And it's like, OK, let's take this really seriously versus a guys. is this is not a this is not a difference that's going to make a difference. Let's save our you know, bullets for stuff that is going to make a difference where we are going to have to go and really kind of knock down, drag it out and figure out what's going on.

Orlando Wood (29:51)
Yeah.

Mark Gross (29:52)
But you know, Frida Leigh is also really good at like, think what scares clients, and Bell mentioned this, like shifts and things that change and as the idea...

grows, it just changes over time. And sometimes you get clients who are like, but the board did this, you you had this in the automatic, should we do it? And you show the edit, you're like, well, it's tough for them to get, you know, over that. And there was none of that this time. think, you know, Bell and team were like, cool, we absolutely love the edit. You know, it went very smoothly and they had a few changes here and there. Hey, we should look at the scene and they were good suggestions. so, yeah, I wish we had better stories.

Orlando Wood (30:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark Gross (30:31)
ragouts but ⁓ that

Orlando Wood (30:32)
That's all right. didn't want to, I didn't want to get

Chris Bellinger (30:33)
Yeah

Orlando Wood (30:33)
you into

an agency review process or anything and like drag up, drag up miserable arguments. You guys have had knocked down drag outs. ⁓

Mark Gross (30:36)
Haha

Chris Bellinger (30:37)
You

Yeah.

Mark Gross (30:43)
Yeah,

no, was pretty smooth.

Orlando Wood (30:45)
Yeah, I mean, you getting to this year, did it feel less risky this year? I mean, obviously, you know, with the success of last year's messaging and the tone, you know, I think you guys did a really great job of carrying it on, keeping it in the same place without it seeming boring or like I've been there before. It was a real development of that. The emotional environment, I think that you guys have created very well.

You know, but you definitely sort of pushed it into another place. Did it feel as risky this year? Did you just feel like coming home?

Mark Gross (31:14)
can answer this first. It's very hard, I think, to repeat some of that magic. you know, Bell and team tasked us with that. So we were nervous going in to see whether we can get there. I think it is risky, just as risky to repeat kind of what you did last year, is to do something new. But yeah, Bell, I don't know if you want to expound on that.

Chris Bellinger (31:35)
No,

mean, listen, I think a sequel is 10 times harder than an original. I think trying to repeat something and get the same level of success without it being as unique.

is the hardest thing to do. I always say writing a sequel, a 2.0 is harder than writing a 1.0 ⁓ because it's easy to say a 1.0 is successful when it's successful, but the majority of 1.0s aren't. How do you make a 2.0 feel bigger and more exciting and unique and different and still resonate? So I think it's it's riskier to try and top what you've done before because you already have benchmarks.

Orlando Wood (31:49)
⁓ Yeah.

Mm-mm.

Chris Bellinger (32:09)
versus coming in for the first time with a new approach on something, it's a, don't know. I don't know if this is gonna work or not. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But the 2.0, it does feel riskier. Now we weren't as concerned about would the message resonate because we knew that we could based on the first year with Little Farmer. And then this year with Last Harvest, it was, where do we take this? Like, does this story even extend? And where could it go and can we dominate that? We had debates about, do we just bring back the same cast?

Orlando Wood (32:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (32:37)
Is it the same thing that we did last year only with more potato plants? Has she gotten older? Does she have a little sibling? Like, is it a true two-poeno of that or is it an evolution of an entire story? And so I think what Highdive and the team did was really great and brought us back some options on, hey, here's where we can take this story and here's where we can feel how to make it work. Now, shooting with Taika again made it feel like it came from the same universe. Obviously, he's an amazing storyteller, so that makes things so much better. ⁓

Orlando Wood (32:48)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (33:04)
But it's different when you take a swing and you're like, don't know, this could work, this could not work, but at least we're taking a risk versus year two, it's, the expectation is you're gonna do well. The expectation is that you're gonna beat where you were before. That's a different level of

Orlando Wood (33:13)
Mm-hmm.

we had talked earlier on about how there's a much bigger PR play and some things you do that with some things you don't. It feels like this is one of those ones you don't write. You will you wait for the big day. People are watching. They're going to be surprised by this. You're not currently seeding any of this from PR standpoint or are you?

Chris Bellinger (33:37)
Yeah, we're still going to do like the exclusives release and stuff like that. But I mean, it's short. It's not.

Orlando Wood (33:42)
And how long before

does that happen?

Chris Bellinger (33:44)
I don't know, Sarah, am I allowed to say? Can we say a couple days? Few days, there you go. So it'll be a few days before the game and that's similar to what we did last year, again, because we shot this one the same time. We shot this one second week in January. So, you know, it's still a push, which I think is a little bit of a blessing because you can't overthink it.

Sarah Pierce (33:47)
Yeah, a few days.

Orlando Wood (33:49)
All right, okay.

Okay. Yeah. Right.

Chris Bellinger (34:03)
Like, you we always joke around of, well, you know, you never, there's never a real timeline or a real schedule. There's a real timeline here. Like there are only so many rotations of the earth before the Super Bowl airs. So it's not like we can overthink this and keep pushing on it. But that led to like the big decisions that we make of does it feel right? And it's a lot of gut feel and that's a lot of feeling and trusting the intuition and the brand teams and, you know, leaning into people's superpowers. Like Denise, the, who runs all of potato chips,

Orlando Wood (34:22)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Bellinger (34:33)
is a massive music lover and fan. And so where I'm more on the creative side of things from a visual perspective and storytelling, she's music. So I don't have anything to do with the music. She works directly with the teams on everything and she's a brand side, but she's a music lover and she crushes it with the music side. And so it's also speed of trust that makes this stuff happen.

Orlando Wood (34:35)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Mark Gross (34:50)
Yeah.

Also, we talked about this. It's

there's such a fervor and such an interest in the spots before the game. It's a huge mistake not to capitalize on that. And just you want to take advantage of people like they're excited about it. know, morning shows want to get the spots. It's you want to ride the wave while it's there and to not do so is a mistake because we all know you have to do a lot to keep your spot to keep it interesting post game because you know, come Tuesday, we would always celebrate. do well in the game Monday and Tuesday. All of a sudden, it drops off like what's next, you know, and so

Chris Bellinger (35:00)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (35:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bellinger (35:22)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (35:24)
Yeah.

Mark Gross (35:24)
ride the wave ⁓ prior to the Super Bowl.

Chris Bellinger (35:25)
Yeah. And that's a big point too.

mean, like we said, since, you know, we've got two spots in the game this year, and they're doing very different jobs, and they're compounding and building upon each other to try and extend that narrative a little bit about Lays and where Lays come from and what they're meant for.

Orlando Wood (35:32)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm

And so do you do any any aftercare PR? Do you do anything to give it a longer tail afterwards? Or do you just kind of is it that just that what's next? You know, let's go.

Chris Bellinger (35:52)
No, I we see where we rank and everything and that does a big push, but then we turn on media. So this is going to be a campaign that's full 360. It's going to have 15s and 30s and sixes that go on TV nationally and reach and we continue to extend it. And like what you're saying, our second spot is going to be around the 72 hour challenge for the freshest bag of Lays you've ever had. That happens three days after the game. No one does that. And so now we've got a secondary push that happens three days after the game that continues this story of Lays that, you know, why we're America's favorite chip, you know, since 1930.

Orlando Wood (35:54)
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Right. Okay.

Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (36:22)
and all that stuff. And

Orlando Wood (36:22)
Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (36:23)
the last harvest tells a really emotional story about how our potatoes are grown and where they come from and who does that. And then the 72 hour challenge is around the fact that we're walking the walk. Like we're going from potato to chip in 72 hours. And if we don't, we're gonna give you a year supply of lays. Like that's a big promise to make. And we gotta pull that off though. So for half the team.

Orlando Wood (36:33)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (36:43)
the game, like for half the team, the game day is the end of the story. And for half the team, game day is the beginning of this next sprint story and where that's going. But it's all tied into the Lays narrative.

Orlando Wood (36:49)
Right.

Mark Gross (36:54)
say last year, again, a quiet spot. Our cut downs on TikTok performed extremely well, which was a bit of a surprise, being that it's on social media, it's a bit more quiet than all the craziness you see that goes on there. So it actually did quite well post game for the brand.

Chris Bellinger (36:59)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (37:08)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Bellinger (37:10)
Yeah, we aired it all year. It ended up being like,

Orlando Wood (37:10)
Yeah. Right.

Chris Bellinger (37:12)
was hard, it was hard for you to go on TV and watch anything without seeing that little farmer girl pop up. Cause my family and friends kept texting like, I'm seeing it again. I'm like, well, I guess we're reaching, I guess we're that 70 reach.

Orlando Wood (37:16)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Gross (37:23)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (37:24)
Yeah. Well, and obviously there's a there's an amplification of the spot itself. But what do you guys then do with other social media platforms? Do you create either bespoke content for that or do you find ways to amend the media that you have or the spot that you've made? Do you find?

you know, ways to put that together differently for other social platforms or second screen.

Chris Bellinger (37:48)
Yeah, all the above. mean, what Little Farmer told us was that, hey, this is a tone that not only we can play in, but we can own. And it's gonna resonate. So we started doing, you know, what we call product superiority type of content where it focuses on where the potatoes come from, where the farmers are. We have got a whole new really artistic initiative coming out around a book that's gonna be a big thing. And so like, there's a lot of these things that start to then play itself and say, well, how far can this tone stretch into all these other mediums?

Orlando Wood (38:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mark Gross (38:17)
And we had a social media team on both shoots this year, last year. They're over our shoulder shooting content the whole time we're filming. it's like Bell said, it's both.

Orlando Wood (38:23)
Yeah.

what does it look like on game day? Because I remember, you know, one of the things that kind of I think was a paradigm shifter for me on game day is like the Oreo blackout tweet. You know, it kind of it blew my mind, having worked in an agency like widen, you know, that that all the decision makers would have had to have been in the room and available in order to make that decision. And I think everybody went.

Holy shit. guess we have to have all our decision makers in a room in a war room on game day. Otherwise, what are we doing? What does it look like? Or do you guys have that kind of, do you set up a war room and give that team a certain amount of permissions and leeway? How does it, you know, how does, yeah, how does that work?

Chris Bellinger (39:07)
yeah, war rooms are now the standard. I was in the stadium when that blackout happened and saw the tweet come out and just thought, damn it. It's one of those where you're you're jealous.

Orlando Wood (39:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (39:18)
And so then I actually

ran the war room for Doritos for the next four or five years after that, ⁓ trying to replicate some of that. And some of it's just luck and magic, but we absolutely will have a full dedicated war room team with multiple agencies that are involved, legal PR clients all stationed on there. ⁓

Orlando Wood (39:20)
⁓ huh. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. And so Mark, your

creatives are there as well. I how does that work in between the agency and the, and the brand?

Mark Gross (39:42)
Yeah, this particular year, we won't be the war room itself, but we're on call. Same thing actually, our lawyers and our teams are on call. It really depends on the brand. know, for instance, Stellantis one year for

Chris Bellinger (39:51)
Yeah.

Mark Gross (39:54)
ram trucks we had an idea where we weren't on the game but after a spot would run we tweeted out videos of the ram truck pulling those particular products we had the brands participate and agree to do it before the game so that was an instance we really had content going in a war room during the game and so ⁓ it really varies based on the client

Orlando Wood (40:11)
Mm-mm.

Right. And so, know, and so are those just offshoot teams or are you guys kind of, you know, what's happening inside PepsiCo during the game?

Chris Bellinger (40:24)
Yeah, mean, we've got so obviously multiple brands have multiple war rooms running. We've obviously got a large presence at the stadium and at the game. And so it does depend on like, what's the brand playbook? Like, are we going for share a voice? Are we going for engagement? Are we trying to let the ad speak for itself? Are we amplifying? Are we doing real time engagement? We've got we'll have a huge social team, which is mostly managed internally for free delay and PepsiCo foods. So we'll have that team here in Dallas stationed and ready to go on everything.

And then, you know, I know our beverage partners do a similar thing. We have a massive global war room that does data tracking for all share a voice to see how we're doing quarter by quarter whenever the ads air. And then, yeah, there's a strategic text threads that are set up amongst the team and WhatsApp threads that are set up to basically say, hey, when something does need to get elevated, we're here. But there's a large amount of leeway given to those teams on the ground to be able to then make calls and move at the speed of culture and at the speed of conversation. Because the worst thing that you can have

Orlando Wood (41:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (41:19)
would you know is, it took us three hours to get approval. It's like, that's on, that moved on. And then during Super Bowl, it's, you you're shouting into a hurricane against 25 other brands who are also dropping a ton of cash to try and be conversational and everyone who was talking about it in real time. So if you're three minutes out, then you're, you're, you're late. You might as well just give up.

Orlando Wood (41:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's always something that the next thing is happening. You know, like if if something goes wrong or weird, the game still progresses. And so even being out by three minutes is like, well, you know, three minutes could be the end of a quarter. could be, you know, somebody's had a touchdown. It's your moment is over,

Chris Bellinger (41:44)
Always. Yeah.

don't know what's about to happen. So I've done the war room where we had a 90 page quarter by quarter minute by minute plan that immediately got thrown out of the room like two minutes into the game because something happened. Or a spot aired we didn't know about or a major event happened that we weren't sure about.

Orlando Wood (42:08)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Chris Bellinger (42:18)
So I think you've got, you go into it with the best laid plans and how it's gonna go if everything goes perfectly. But, you those of us who've been there know like, this is gonna be an absolute shit show. And that's just kinda, you gotta roll with it. And that's where some of the best ideas and the best creative comes from too. teams sitting there bantering back and forth and watching it like real time because we've also done stunts in stadium before. And you have the in stadium team saying, my God, did you just see this that happened? And the people at home are like, it didn't show up on TV. No, I didn't see anything.

Orlando Wood (42:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (42:44)
So we can't talk

Orlando Wood (42:44)
Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (42:44)
about it because 200 million people didn't know about it, even though you may have seen it happen live.

Orlando Wood (42:49)
Chris, you talked about Popcorners and how it had both buzz and business impact. mean, obviously those are two very different scorecards that you guys are both using to to judge success on the Monday. But what does success look like? You know, I mean, let's talk about specifically this year. We're recording this before it's coming out. It's coming out after the Super Bowl. This will be coming out the Monday after. So.

What would have happened yesterday for you to go? This campaign really crushed it for us.

Chris Bellinger (43:19)
man, I hope you have a lot of happy tears that come from this. I hope people have fallen in love with this family and this story, you know, that is based on some of our real multi-generational farmers that exist within Blaze. And I hope Monday we're sitting there at number one on USA Today Ad Meter. But more so I hope that we have dominated the word of mouth. And you know, we say I can buy a like, I can buy a view. I can't buy a comment and I can't buy a share.

Orlando Wood (43:22)
Yes.

Chris Bellinger (43:43)
So I hope people either pause and rewind the spot and go into it and watch it again and again and go online and watch the three minute version. But I think what you say is like, know, Lays is here. Lays is America's favorite ship. That's what I would love for people to be talking about. And I hope, well, like I said, with the 72 hour challenge, I've got, you know, 100,000 people that are expecting to get their freshest bag of Lays they've ever had in 72 hours, because that's immediately where we'll be going into, because that's day one for us.

Orlando Wood (43:57)
Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (44:10)
on the secondary challenge.

Orlando Wood (44:10)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (44:12)
or it's gonna be a quiet flight home on Monday.

Orlando Wood (44:13)
yeah,

Mark Gross (44:15)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (44:18)
how much do you know about what your competitors are doing? I mean, you know, Mark, do you, do you get a, get a rumbling within the industry of what the other agencies are doing?

You

Mark Gross (44:30)
you know, it's, it's getting now that everyone releases their spots early, it's you do. So we're monitoring everything that comes out every day. I've already seen, you know, anything that's aired pops up that we're looking into and the teasers. So yeah, we're aware. Unfortunately, there's, there's nothing you can do about that. You know, last year, we were a little nervous because we Budweiser dropped their spot. And there was a story of

Orlando Wood (44:51)
Mm-mm.

Mark Gross (44:56)
this keg falling off the truck and we had a potato falling off our truck for lays and so we're like, you know, there was a lot of, yeah, we were panicked. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (44:59)
Yeah, I remember it. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (45:03)
God, when that that was a gut punch, because I was like, ⁓ my

God, the keg drops off the back of the truck in the first three seconds and a potato drops off the back of our truck in the first three seconds. Damn it.

Orlando Wood (45:13)
Yeah.

Mark Gross (45:15)
Yeah, yeah, we were we

were not happy about that. Luckily, that was completely different that, know, and that happens. But, you know, yeah, there have been instances where we've my God, they're using this song, you know, is, you know, we've had a pivot.

Orlando Wood (45:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Gross (45:31)
But yeah, we're just aware by scouring the trades and seeing what's out there and seeing all the spots. Unfortunately, sometimes there's just nothing you can do, ⁓ you know, and make a pivot. But luckily, there's been no disasters where someone is doing the exact same idea. Sometimes it just happens. You get an overlap on the game. There are new ideas. There's better ways to tell ideas.

Orlando Wood (45:38)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (45:45)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (45:48)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Bellinger (45:49)
Yeah.

Well, it's like last year, like there was a lot of mustache ads. Who would have thought that? This year with a bunch of the drops already, there's been a lot of musical ads. Who would have thought that? I think there's already been two or three that have dropped that have been musical adaptations and singing. ⁓ So I think you're always kind of holding your breath a little bit about who's releasing what and where. It's a running joke where like there's no new ideas. There's just no new ways of bringing them to life.

Orlando Wood (45:54)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Chris Bellinger (46:13)
And so it's, you're always a little concerned leading into Super Bowl. Like, are you going to be upstaged? Are you going to be outshined? Or is another idea that's going to seem exactly like that. And then from there though, it's, it's always kind of fun to see that what do people talk about when years drops and you get hit up by all of your friends and everybody in the industry and everyone else starts talking about things or no one does. And you're like, bloody it's worse when no one reaches out.

Orlando Wood (46:13)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm

Yeah, yeah, that's worse. Yeah.

Mark Gross (46:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

But this is just nothing you could do. It's exciting sometimes to see other good spots. Listen, we want to win the meter and the trades and all the voting for sure.

And you just curse it and say, darn it, that was a good spot. They may best us. it's funny. I saw the Sandberg spot today for Maynays just launched. So it's fun to see a new work come out. But we want to win.

Orlando Wood (46:50)
Yeah.

But

based on what you've seen, how do you like your chances?

Mark Gross (47:03)
I like our chances. I do. think, you know, for some, I felt like last year was not a great year at all. I know it seems people say that every year, like it wasn't as good as last year, but I, some reason, I really felt like last year was a weak year. I don't know why that was. It was nothing that I was jealous of.

But from what I've seen so far, again, I think people are taking real big, loud comedy swings. I think Our Spot is a great story. It tells a beautiful story of generations of farmers, and I think it's gonna resonate and stand out amongst everyone trying to do the kick in the pants humor.

Orlando Wood (47:36)
Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (47:37)
Yeah,

mean, we've got a lot of chat threads going where every time a new spot drops, everybody's like, so what do you think? What do you think? How do we think what is going on? And I think that's happening in every organization. And again, everyone might say like, they're not looking at they're not paying attention. They are. Everybody's paying attention. It's too big of a stage or too big of an investment that you can't just say like, don't care. ⁓

Orlando Wood (47:41)
Yeah

Yeah.

Mark Gross (47:46)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (47:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm.

Chris Bellinger (47:56)
So I think, you know, it's always fun though. Again, it's we always joke like, it's the Super Bowl of blank. Like this is the Super Bowl of Super Bowl. It's the Super Bowl of advertising. So we love to see it. I love to see all the creativity that comes out and have some fun with it. And then what I would want to know more, though, is who pitched this? How did they get this bot or how to get into this stage? That's kind of my favorite thing to try and figure out also is like, I wish I could have seen this presented because.

Orlando Wood (48:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Gross (48:16)
Yes.

Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (48:20)
Like, you know, we talked about the Budweiser one with the eagle and I'm like, that was exactly as boarded the moment those eagle wings spread out over the Budweiser. Like I just can imagine the write-up for that little moment that happens. And that's kind of the fun part of these.

Orlando Wood (48:33)
⁓

Mark Gross (48:34)
Yeah,

Orlando Wood (48:34)
Yeah.

Mark Gross (48:35)
and we learn. know, it's good learning thing from other brands. What to do and what not to do. Yeah.

Chris Bellinger (48:36)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (48:40)
Mm-hmm.

Well, great guys. Thank you so much. I mean, it's it's been a real pleasure to talk to you about this. Good luck. mean, I know this is coming out. The luck will have already been harvested by then. But but good luck with it. I mean, it's a it's a great spot. It definitely had me tearing up. And I think, you know, I agree. mean, I think that there's you've done you did something so kind of unique last year. And there are there's a great.

history of kind of serious ads, know, ads in the, you know, the halftime in America and, know, and things like that. And there's or I should say not serious, but earnest. And I always really like those ads. I think they really, they really connect. And I hope this one does. I hope you get that number one spot. And thank you guys so much for chatting with me about it.

Mark Gross (49:26)
Thank you, Orlando. Appreciate it.

Chris Bellinger (49:26)
Thank you, really appreciate it. It's

always fun. Yeah, anytime.

Mark Gross (49:30)
Thanks for having us on.

Orlando Wood (49:30)
Awesome.

And then, yeah, hopefully we can bring you guys back for next year and find out how the 72-hour potato went. ⁓

Chris Bellinger (49:38)
Don,

you're gonna hear it in real time. You'll see how that one goes.

Orlando Wood (49:42)
Fantastic. You're right.

OK, perfect. Well, I'm very excited. Thank you guys so much and I really appreciate it.

Chris Bellinger (49:49)
Yeah, thank you.

Mark Gross (49:49)
Thank you.

Bye.