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

Hello and welcome to a special Super Bowl episode of Technically Creative. This week, I'm talking to two people who know more about Super Bowl advertising than just about anyone. Mark Gross is the co-founder and co-chief creative officer of High Dive Advertising, and Chris Bellinger is the chief creative officer of PepsiCo Foods. Between them, they've shaped decades of work for brands like Budweiser, Doritos, State Farm, Cheetos, and Lay's, including last year's breakout Lay's spot, The Little Farmer, directed by Taika Waititi. They've also done this year's follow-up, The Last Harvest, a beautiful generational story about a father passing his potato farm down to his daughter. It's emotional and sincere and quietly powerful, which makes it stand out in a sea of celebrity-stuffed spectacle. But that spectacle has never been bigger. A Super Bowl ad now costs around $8 million for 30 seconds of advertising. Some reports have it at around $10 million, but that number hasn't really been substantiated. but it still makes it advertising's most expensive and arguably most important stage. But the nature of that stage has changed dramatically in recent years. It used to be that the Super Bowl was the launch of the spot. You made your ad, aired it during the game, and just hoped that people talked about it the next day. Now, the Super Bowl sure is the reason the spot exists, but it's a cultural temple that drives weeks of teasers, press exclusives, and social media rollouts before the ball is even kicked. Brands build full-scale war rooms for game day, with teams monitoring the broadcast and social feeds in real time, ready to jump into the conversation the second an opportunity appears. Brands build full-scale war rooms for game day, with teams monitoring the broadcast and social feeds in real time, ready to jump into the conversation the second an opportunity appears. Because when you're spending $8 or $60 million on 30 or 60 seconds of advertising, you're not just buying airtime. You're buying a cultural moment. It's the one day of the year where people actually want to watch the ads. when America's biggest sporting event becomes advertising's biggest stage, and only a handful of brands and a handful of creative teams get to play there year after year. So today, we're talking to two of those people, the two people who have mastered that arena, and about how Super Bowl advertising has changed, and how you stand out when everyone is shouting, and why sometimes the boldest move is to be the quietest story in the room. Here's my conversation with Mark Gross and Chris Bellinger. Thank you guys so much for being on. I'm really excited to be doing this special Super Bowl episode 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 advertising. Mark Gross, you are the co-founder and co-chief creative officer of High Dive Ad Agency. And Chris Bellinger, chief creative officer of PepsiCo Foods USA, who as well you have an incredible history working on super bowl spots for doritos for lays and obviously the great lays spot that we uh we will have just seen when this comes out during the super bowl so thank you guys both for for coming on here i really appreciate it sure yeah thanks for having us yeah excited to talk super bowl always you know you guys are kind of real specialists in super bowl mark especially having worked on bud light and then you know High Dive really seems to specialize in Super Bowl spots. Obviously, for those of us watching, it seems that Super Bowl spots have changed a lot over the course of the last 20 years. What made a great Super Bowl ad 20 years ago versus what makes a great Super Bowl ad today? What's interesting when I started doing spots for Anheuser-Busch, not as many celebs. That certainly has changed. 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 are talked about that people really love seem to be 60s. 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 to just never do that you would we would do our 30s you'd air it on a game and people talk about in the usa today for for a day after and that was it and then it would it would peter out so gary v just the other day was saying that for his money even at you know eight million dollars 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? Yeah, I mean, listen, we've joked about this is everyone actually hates advertising. That's a harsh truth. Everyone is actively trying to avoid advertising in any way, shape 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 that, you know, it's worth its 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 Super Bowl, you know, 20 years ago, where it was all 30 second spots and we turned them over to consumers to let make them and they were able to win Super Bowl and that was a very formulaic approach 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. And I was I was gonna say the market speaks for itself I mean I think costs keep going up because it it's so valuable and it is so successful and you get such ROI that people are willing to you know to pay the exorbitant costs. My creative partner, Chad, always said, you know, there are no losers on the game, really. You know, even if one of your spots, and we all go by the ad meter USA Today, if you come in 49th, you know, 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 want to watch ads. So there are no losers. It's so valuable to have your spot on the game. Yeah. You're paying for the spot, but then as well, all of the teasing and the amplification and the weeks going into it. We're two weeks out as of 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. How do you make sure that your PR strategy going into that media buy is respecting and amplifying the moment itself? It's tough. I 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, oh yeah, I heard about this. I saw this. Someone sent it to me already. 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 live sports is still one of the few areas where people are actively watching versus the era of streaming where everybody's binging when they have their time to do it. Yeah. 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 it gets some of the people talking. But it depends on our other clients. You know, we used to work with Rocket Mortgage and Casey Herbis, 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. 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 play. Yeah, I 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 know, we've even heard it on social media where people feel like we've gotten oversaturated 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, was it didn't have a celebrity. And instead it had this 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 multigenerational family farms. And I think that really resonated with people because at that point it was so different than everybody else's. I 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's going to 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 uh because people want to see good stories on the game yeah there are great moments like the uh the arnold state farm spot where you get to do both at the same time 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. 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 bags. You know, for instance, when 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. Yeah, you're in trouble if you write a spot around a celeb and they don't want to do it. This year's Lay's 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 Lay's spot. It almost felt like a continuation of that while feeling very different and so emotional. It seemed a very strong choice, I feel like, you know, 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? Yeah, I mean, 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 deep, deeply involved in. And so taking it from fresh eyes, though, and saying, is anyone going to care on the backside? Like, we understand because you've heard, you 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. and it i mean it we 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 in the game and tell a lot of big jokes and so i i think even though i think the story is what made it so special and the fact that it was a real story and a story about these generation of farmers generations of farmers that grow the potatoes It just Quietness helped it stand out in a 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 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. And Frito-Lay came to us, Belle and team and Denise, And it was their idea to do a second wave of this. And that was what the assignment was. And so it was a great idea. And hopefully we do as well as we did last year. Yeah, I 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? 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 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, you know, we did a 60 and it paid off huge, 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 restage and everything that we're being 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, I 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 and do you know going in i 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 did you know that the little farmer was gonna be your super bowl ad from conception or did you choose it yeah anyone who tells you otherwise is straight up lying yeah no absolutely not we we were gonna go with more where you finally went But actually, I think this is our one. 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 going to shoot two weeks before the game starts? Yeah, yeah, 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 loved that spot as well. But I think once we saw the edit for Little Farmer, 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 an assignment. We agreed. Like 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, you know, showed Bell and team work, it was probably 10 scripts we showed. You know, we can go at it this way. We can go at it this way. Just a lot of ways to tell that unique potato farm story. Yeah, and then it was an unexpected hit. I mean, I think it was number two on USA's list of best Super Bowl spots, wasn't it? Yeah, just keep rubbing it in. Yeah, that one hurt. Lost by .01. .01 we lost to our friends over at Budweiser. It hurts. It hurt. Oh, well, I'm sorry. I was here to applaud you on that, but you're right. I do see what you mean. If my aunt Nancy had just voted, we would have won. But yes, so how does that work? How far in advance do you buy your Super Bowl media then? If you still had that ability to choose from the offline, which probably if you shot it early January, offline is probably getting to you third week of January. I mean, you're a couple weeks out. That's without post and finishing. I mean, yeah, how much flexibility do you have? And how much media do you have to have already bought to have that freedom to choose at that late stage? So, I mean, we're notorious for being a part of the Super Bowl, big partners at 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 going to 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 going to 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 going to be focusing on this year? And so was there a moment you looked at the little farmer and went, 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. Did you have that conversation or that concern? 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 hitting multiple priorities over the course of two 30s, 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 Taika Waititi and it was just done so well that you were so incaptivating. 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 is what we want to do? And on the agency side, we're biting our nails and praying that our spot gets on because, you 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 we're always a little nervous sometimes. But, yeah, we lucked out. And did you get Mark, do you have those moments of being cynical and going, well, surely they're not good. We we really love and believe in the little farmer, but they're probably going to go with the comedy play or they're probably going to go with, you know, something else. Did you did you have those private moments or we can mute Chris if you don't want him to hear? Yeah, you know, we do, but it's 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, I listen, we heard one year again, I keep bringing up Rocket, but evidently they had a spot that, you know, we still don't know all the details that they were down the road in a celeb and they wound up canceling and 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 is 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. How do you think differently about strategy and creative for a Super Bowl ad if you know it's likely to be? When you get the brief or you really have a sense that, OK, 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? You know. As an agency, you know, Chad, 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. And so sometimes that isn't the budgets aren't there necessarily during the year. So you have to 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. I 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 is going to carry the story. And a lot of times they miss. And I think that's one thing Frito-Lay does well where they don't. I don't know if, Bella, you have anything to add to that question. 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. 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 nature of the platform itself. And it's are you using the platform for awareness or use it for entertainment or use it for brand building? Those are all different questions you have. So 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 the end of the day, it's still got to be a spot that's worthy of putting on the Super Bowl. Those are kind of the things that we look at when we talk about what's going to go on and when we evaluate who is going to get the Super Bowl slots. Like we've seen before, we've talked about whether it's Doritos and Lay's or Cheetos or Flamin' Hot or PGS, which is the portfolio. All those discussions go into, okay, who is going to get, you know, literally this primetime placement of advertising. I'll tell one very quick fun story back in the day for Anheuser-Busch. 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 I think we shot in September. And August the 4th loved it so much, put it on the shelf, and he 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 were just writing a regular spot, trying to be as funny as we could be, and they saved it and put it on the game. So, yeah. but there are undeniable things that are so super bowl centric like i'm thinking the the fritos twas the night before uh with marchand like you know it was the night before the super bowl how i spaced on that last bit i don't know when else are you gonna 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 uh we're going to do a big super bowl activation that couldn't possibly live anywhere else. Yeah. So that was actually an idea that we launched at football first, back to football. It was twice 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 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 weeks later, leadership was like, what are you doing? No. It was Rachel Fernando said, you're going to do this. And we're like, okay, I guess we are going to do this. And fired the machine back up and got the band back together. And it was the right call. It was perfect. I mean, it just, 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 and it just felt like it made sense and it was one like you said this is the time you you can't do it at another time so why let that opportunity 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 what's the difference between an ad that wins on tv versus one that wins on like the internet and on social i think it's a huge difference i 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 it was spicy but not too spicy did amazingly on social media with walton Goggins and everything else. We had 300 million organic views across TikTok. 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 spot like 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 spots that are really designed for these big stage real mass audience And you got to take both of those into consideration when you 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 pop corners, where in a new world, they didn't make meth. They made pop corners. 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. 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 kind of, is it just, you know, cross your fingers and pray, or is there any sort of creative design in that? It's a little bit of both. I think it's a little bit of cross your fingers, a little bit of plan. You know, I 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 uh and that that would catch on like that itself was like oh my god jason momo without muscles being skinny and so we kind of had an inkling that that would would and you know 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. 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, you know, when you guys are working together, where do agency and brand priorities most often clash when it comes to the Super Bowl? I mean, 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? We're talking about before, we're talking about on set, we're talking about in post. Bit of everything. I just want to know what fights you guys have. I want to hear this. Go ahead, Mark. You know, I got to be really, you know, the more exciting story would say that we fought a lot. And I got to say this year and 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. And 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. So I don't know. You may have some, Bell, but I think, you know, 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, you know, I think casting, OK, I got one last year casting. We had someone we absolutely love, Taika loved. I think Belle and team wanted to see a different young girl. It was frustrating at the time. We're like, damn it. We loved her. But listen, they made us actually Belle and team chose someone else. And she turned out fantastic, you know, and so it was fine. It wasn't a fall on a sword for anything. And sometimes we have those arguments. We really do. I think Frito-Lay is great at listening to us. when we'll fight the good fight and if not we lose that battle we move on to the next thing so um i don't know if you got any bella that that one came to mind the casting that's a great one i 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 where 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 or this specific approach. It's like the story is there. So now it's just a matter of what story we're 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 and so it's finding that good balance between things and i think the good thing is like born 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 for something and it's like okay let's take this really seriously versus a guys this is this is not a this is not a difference that's going to make a difference let's save our 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. You know, Frito-Lay is also really good at, like, I 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 know, you had this to the automatic. Should we do it? And you show the edit, you know, like, well, it's tough for them to get, you know, over that. And there was none of that this time. I 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, look at this scene. And they were good suggestions. And so, yeah, I wish we had better stories. So we had knockdown drag outs. That's all right. I didn't want to get you into an agency review process or anything and like drag up miserable arguments you guys have had. Yeah, no, it was pretty smooth. 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 or did you just feel like coming home? I can answer this first. it was very it's very hard I think to repeat some of that magic and you know Bell and team test us with that so we're we're 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 oh I 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 those aren't it's how do you make a 2.0 feel bigger and more exciting and unique and different and still resonate so i think it's actually it's riskier to try and top what you've done before because you already have benchmarks versus coming in for the first time with a new approach on something it's a i don't know i don't know if is going to 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 what the message resonated 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? 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 what is it a true 2.0 of that or is an evolution of an entire story and so i think what high dive and the team did was a 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 but it's different when you take a swing you're like i don't know this could work this cannot work, but at least we're taking a risk versus year two. It's the expectation is you're going to do well. The expectation is that you're going to beat where you were before. That's a different level of pressure. 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, right? 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 a PR standpoint, or are you? yeah we're still going to we're still going to do like the exclusives release and stuff like that but i mean it's short how long before does that happen 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 it's still a push which i think is a little bit of a blessing because you can't overthink it like you know 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 uh but that led to like the big decisions that we make does it feel right and it's a lot of gut feel and it's a lot of feeling and trusting the the intuition and the brand teams and you know leaning into people's superpowers like denise who runs all the potato chips 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 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 you 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 we do well in the game monday and tuesday all of a sudden it drops off like what's next you know and so uh ride the wave and that's that's a big point too i mean like we said since you know we've got we 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. 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. No, I mean, we see where we rank and everything. Yeah, right. 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 fans and 30s and 60s that go on TV nationally and reach and we continue to extend it. And like we were 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 1938 and all that stuff. And 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 going to give you a year's supply of Lay's. Like, that's a big promise to make. And we got to pull that off, though. So, you know, 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 Lay's narrative. I was going to say, last year, again, a quiet spot, our cutdowns on TikTok performed extremely well. Yeah. Which was a bit of a surprise, you know, being that it's on social media, it's a bit more quiet than all this, you know, craziness you see that goes on there. So it actually did quite well post game for the brand. Yeah, we aired it all year. It ended up being like, it was hard. It was hard for you to go on TV and watch anything without seeing that little farmer girl pop up because my family and friends kept asking like, I've seen it again. I'm like, well, I guess we're reaching. I guess we're hitting that 70 reach. 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 the media you have or the the spot that you've made do you find you know ways to put that together differently for other social platforms and or second screen yeah all the above i 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 going to 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 going to be a big thing And so like there 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 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 Belle said, it's both. 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. It blew my mind, having worked in an agency like Wyden, you know, 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, I 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, you know, and give that team a certain amount of permissions and leeway? Yeah. War rooms are, you know, 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 just, you're jealous. 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. And so Mark, your creatives are there as well. I mean, how does that work in between the agency and the brand? 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. You know, for instance, Stellantis one year for 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. And we had the brands participate and agree to do it before the game. So that was an instance where we really had content going in a war room during the game. And so it really varies based on the client. Are those just offshoot teams or are you guys kind of, you know, what's happening inside PepsiCo during the game then? Yeah, I 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 of 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 Frito Le and PepsiCo Foods. So we'll have that team here in Dallas stationed and ready to go on everything. And, 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 of voice to see how we're doing quarter by quarter whenever the ads air. And then, yeah, there's 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 could have, which 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 know, 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 late. You might as well just give up. Yeah, and there's always something. The next thing is happening. Always. Like if something goes wrong or weird, the game still progresses. And so even being out by three minutes, three minutes could be the end of a quarter. It could be somebody's had a touchdown. Your moment is over. You 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. So I think you've got you go into it with the best laid plans and how it's going to go if everything goes perfectly. But, you know, those of us who've been there know like this is going to be an absolute shit show. And that's just kind of you got to roll with it. And that's where some of the best ideas and the best creative comes from, too, those 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, oh, 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. So we can't talk about it because 200 million people didn't know about it, even though you may have seen it happen live. Chris, you talked about Popcorners and how it had both buzz and business impact. I mean, obviously, those are two very different scorecards. that you guys are both using 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? 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, that is based on some of our real multi-generational farmers that exist within Lays. And I hope Monday, we're sitting there at number one, but more so, I hope that we have dominated the word of mouth. And 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. 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, you 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 what we'll be going into because that's day one for us on the secondary challenge. Or it's going to be a quiet flight home on Monday. Yeah. How much do you know about what your competitors are doing? I mean, you know, Mark, do you get a rumbling within the industry of what the other agencies are doing? You know, it's getting, now that everyone releases their spots early, 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 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 this keg falling off the truck and we had a potato falling off our truck for for lays and so we're like uh you know there was when that happened yeah that that was because i was like yeah 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 yeah yeah we were we were not happy about that luckily that was completely different that you know and And that happens. But, you know, yeah, there have been instances where we've, oh, my God, they're using this song, you know, we've had a pivot. But yeah, we're just a bear 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. And sometimes it just happens. You get overlap on the game. There are new ideas. There's no better ways to tell ideas. So 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 no new ways of bringing them to life 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 yours 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 oh buddy it's worse when no one reaches out yeah that's worse yeah but this is just nothing you could do it's exciting sometimes to see other good spots listen you know we want we want to win the meter and the trades and all the voting for sure and you just you just curse it and say darn it that was a good spot you know they may best us but uh it's it's fun i saw the sandberg spot today for mayonnaise you know just launched so it's fun to see new work come out based on what you've seen How do you like your chances? I like our chances. I do. I think, you know, 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 for some reason, I really felt like last year was a weak year. I don't know why that was. There 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 going to resonate and stand out amongst everyone trying to do the kick in the pants humor. Yeah, I 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. Yeah, they're not paying attention. They are. Everybody's paying attention. It's too big of a stage with too big of an investment that you can't just say like, well, I don't care. so i i think you know it's always fun though again it's we always joke like oh 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 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'd they get this bought or how to get into this stage that that's kind of my favorite thing to try and figure out also it's like i wish i could have seen this presented because 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 but i sir like i just can imagine the write-up for that little little moment that happens and that's kind of the fun part of these yeah and we learn you know yeah it's good learning thing from from other brands what to do and what not to do yeah 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 i mean i know this is coming out, the luck will have already been harvested by then. But good luck with it. I mean, it's a great spot. It definitely had me tearing up. And I think you did something so kind of unique last year. And there's a great history of kind of serious ads in the halftime in America and things like that. Or I should say not serious, but earnest. And I always really liked those ads. I think 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. Thank you, Orland. I really appreciate it. It's always fun. Yeah, anytime. Thanks for having us on. And then, yeah, hopefully we can bring you guys back for next year and find out how the 72-hour potato went. Done. You're going to hear it in real time. You'll see how that one goes. Well, I'm very excited. Thank you guys so much. And I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that was my chat with Mark Gross and Chris Bellinger from High Dive and PepsiCo. In case you've not looked, the Lays ad did incredibly well in the USA Today poll, getting second place again. And I know the guys joked, but it's a tremendous achievement to be up there among the best ads at the Super Bowl two years running. And I think they should be very proud. But of course they were robbed. But I think it's proof that doing things a little bit differently and not doing the same old bombastic thing has real merit. And I really applaud them for that. I'm also very keenly watching the 72-hour potato or the 72-hour challenge. That's a fun one as well, incredible activation. And like Chris said, for a whole bunch of people, the Super Bowl was the ending of a big project. And for another bunch of people, it starts right up again. So, you know, advertising is the thing that tends to make the world go around. So in many ways, it just keeps going. So anyway, I hope you really liked that special Super Bowl episode. Next week, we will be talking to Danny Vandesand, who is the founder of Artist and the Machine. And certainly for my money, the best and most interesting conference in celebration of where technology is currently meeting creativity. Their last event in Los Angeles with Grimes was very interesting. And I think they're really head-on tackling a lot of the questions coming out about ethical use of AI, artists' use of AI, certainly. And they're really coming at it from the artist's perspective, which I think is both interesting and necessary. So I hope you tune in. I hope you like this episode. And thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Thank you.