• 10 months ago
Mark Douglas, CEO of MNTN, joins TheStreet to explain what companies get right when it comes to creating a potentially multimillion dollar Super Bowl ad.
Transcript
00:00 Talk to me about something that you think all successful companies do when it comes to the right Super Bowl ad.
00:05 Some pull at your heart strings, they're emotional, others are funny, you're kind of in it for the quick laugh.
00:10 But talk to me, are there any kind of shared similarities or things you've seen in your business over the years
00:15 that really can tee a company up for success?
00:16 Well, I think you're really good at this. You just nailed it. They make it funny.
00:21 Like, the entertainment in the ad has to be better than the game.
00:26 And sometimes, some years, that's not that hard to do. The game's gonna be a little boring.
00:31 Yeah, exactly.
00:32 But the ad has to be entertaining. It really has to capture you.
00:36 I think a lot of them put celebrities in the ad because that kind of just pulls your attention towards it.
00:41 If you're there with your friends and everything, hearing a certain voice, like a Martha Stewart voice,
00:47 you just recognize it immediately.
00:49 So it's having something that's very, very entertaining.
00:53 And if you, you know, it's like YouTube, you can find a way to put a dog in the ad or something like that.
00:59 If people say "aww" and they laugh, it's probably a good ad.
01:02 Alright, so look for dogs in the search engine of commercials.
01:05 When in doubt, dogs and cats. You never know.
01:07 It used to be horses, right?
01:10 It was the Clydesdales, of course. They were iconic for the sport.
01:13 But that's another thing, though. You develop that relationship with your viewers, right?
01:16 So if we see a Clydesdale, we're like, "Oh, we know this is Budweiser."
01:19 Because you're so conditioned to it for doing it for so many years.
01:21 A lot of companies now, and I guess this is kind of the social media era of all this,
01:25 they release the commercials ahead of time.
01:27 I don't understand that.
01:28 Explain to me kind of the calculus as to why 7 days, 10 days before Super Bowl,
01:34 social media is going to release virtually the same 30-second ad I'll see after kickoff.
01:38 Yeah, I don't think that's a good idea.
01:40 I think if you have something really special, you want to have a special moment to put it into the world.
01:47 So I personally wouldn't think that's a good idea to put the ads out in advance.
01:52 But build on that campaign after I think makes a lot more sense.
01:56 I wonder, are there any particular ads, companies, or types of commercials
02:01 you think you're most looking forward to this year?
02:03 Well, last year I thought there were a lot of ads that kind of pulled on nostalgia
02:08 and pulled on TV shows that aren't here anymore.
02:14 So I remember like Breaking Bad, there was a Pop Chips ad where they were like out in the desert
02:20 and they had certain type of chips.
02:22 There was quite a bit of that and I thought that worked really well.
02:26 It was funny and it was shows that people liked and they had the celebrity element in it.
02:31 And I thought a lot of those worked really, really well.
02:34 So I think you'll probably see more of that this year.
02:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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