Newcastle Completely Nails It With Its Fake Super Bowl Campaign
Newcastle couldn't afford to advertise in the Super Bowl this year. And even if it could, Anheuser-Busch InBev's exclusive deal with the NFL would have prevented it from appearing, anyway. But the beer company did imagine what its commercial would look like, and it would have been pretty awesome.
There would be things like space apes:
And a giant evil robot being defeated by the power of a choreographed dance on the beach:
Newcastle produced the satirical "If We Made It" video series with Droga5 as part of its "No Bollocks" campaign, which derides tired beer marketing tactics.
For one of the videos, Newcastle's marketing team didn't tell a series of focus groups that the proposed ad was actually making fun of Super Bowl commercial clichés. The feedback to the storyboard couldn't have been better.
The subjects assumed roles like the voice of reason, the hipster proclaiming "sellout," the viewer angry that such a commercial could ever be made, the viewer who doesn't even know what is meant by "sharing an ad," and our favorite, the gullible consumer who fell for every ridiculous marketing ploy.
The entire thing is worth watching, but the span of opinions is captured by the fan at 1:08 sharing his ideas as the guy next to him looks on in disgust:
The award-winning actress and singer Anna Kendrick, who would have been cast as Hot Party Girl #1, stars in a "behind the scenes" interview about the campaign. She wonders if she would actually be beer ad girl material, because she considers herself "hot for the kind of guy who would feel bad for calling a girl hot":
Retired football star and Super Bowl champion Keyshawn Johnson would have handled the voiceover for a cool skateboarding cat. His commentary on storyboard slides is hilarious, like when he notes the diversity of the CGI cats:
And before these videos premiered on Tuesday, Newcastle promoted a couple of absurd teasers, poking fun of the now-standard practice of advertising advertisements for the Super Bowl.
"We think the formula for creating the most epic Big Game commercial of all time is pretty simple, but when it comes down to it, we'd rather have people drink our beer while watching other peoples' ads," Charles Van Es, senior brand director for Newcastle, said in a statement.
The beer brand will also be releasing new content online during the Super Bowl on Feb. 2. All of the videos are on IfWeMadeIt.com.