Ben Kingsley Stars In A New Teaser For Jaguar's Villainous Super Bowl Ad
Jaguar's campaign leading up to the Super Bowl has focused on promoting the brand as a sophisticated British villain invading the U.S. luxury vehicle market to challenge mainstays like Porsche and Mercedes-Benz.
The new teaser shows Kingsley, who has played bad guys like Sweeney Todd and Iron Man 3's Trevor Slattery, standing in a shadowy, luxury command center. Looking out on a meeting at an airport runway, a sharply dressed Kingsley notices "All the usual suspects."
"Oh, and one new one," he adds as a white Jaguar F-Type coupe zooms across the runway.
In addition to the teaser video, Jaguar created a microsite at BritishVillains.com where visitors can watch the teaser, learn more about the F-Type, and customize a vehicle of their own. The site prominently features a Kingsley headshot above the tagline, "It's Good To Be Bad."
Jaguar announced in November make its first Super Bowl appearance with a spot from "The King's Speech" director Tom Hooper, with the brand hoping to build momentum on the 36% year-to-date sales increase it enjoyed during the first three quarters of 2013.
At the time, it released a 30-second TV commercial that featured a blurred face, the Union Jack, and a football, and asked viewers if they'd noticed that all the best villains are British.
The campaign is being run by Jaguar's creative agency, Spark 44, and its media agency, Mindshare. It has also included a digital promotion aspect through a partnership between Jaguar and Gawker Media's content studio. Gawker created a separate blog, called Good To Be Bad, that features sponsored content from Jaguar, original work from Gawker's content studio, and posts shared from Gawker editorial blogs like Gizmodo and Lifehacker.
The posts focus on general villainy, with titles like "A Guide to World Domination in 2014" and "Four Devious Female Archetypes in Film (And How To Act Like Them)."
The Super Bowl will be played Feb. 2 at MetLife Stadium. With an average price of $4 million for a 30-second commercial, ads at this year's game are the most expensive in Super Bowl history.