This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, we all know there are two reasons people watch the Super Bowl. One is, of course, the football, but the other one the commercials. NBC broadcast the game. It said it sold more than seventy of these spots. Some of those Carol costs as much as seven million dollars for thirty seconds.
One of those getting a lot of attention today and last night, that Rocket Mortgage at It stars Anna Kendrick features a bidding war among barbies. Check it out. Barbie really wants this dream house. It's got stunning views and a slide. Barbies so cool. And Barbie found out about this dream house with an alert from Rocket Holmes. She did, well, it's a super competitive market. Everyone wants to buy the dreamhouse. Betty, I'll good ten over asking cash Street cause let's tear
to the studs. Well, there you have that, having her financial house in order, That's all I'm gonna say. She certainly did. Yeah, I mean you have to in this market, right. Someone who knows quite a bit about advertising in the Super Bowl is Josh Mandel, President of Advertising at Technicolor Creative Studios. Technicolor Creative Studios produced twenty nine of last night's Super Bowl commercials, including that one from Rocket Mortgage, Josh, how are you very well? Thanks? How are you doing?
What is the secret to creating a successful Super Bowl ad? Oh? I wish I knew. Um. I think that's what brands are struggling for every years, to capture the magic of the Super Bowl that. I think what we saw this year especially was a return to optimism and positivity. Um. You'll remember last year the super Bowl, it was right in the little of the pandemic and UM, I think a lot of brands felt like being easy to address the malays that people were feeling. But the super Bowl
to it's a it's a moment where of celebration. It's a moment. I think it's described as our kind of last cultural empire momentum in the entertainment space where you've got people across demographics and race and gen you're coming together at one moment. So it's it's a big moments for France to leverage. And even though we you know, we see declining here on your um road numbers of viewers it's still it's still the best moment in America
to to reach a big swath of our population. It's definitely a come together moment, right and destination viewing and you're gonna watch it live. It is an audience like no other. Hey, Josh, Having said it, I agree with you. I love the optimism, I love the creativity, and to be fair, even kind of take away the pandemic year or the beginning of the pandemic that I feel like the ads over the last few years have gotten And forgive me if you've been involved with them, but I've
gotten uh not as intain entertaining and engaging. And we all talk about it in the newsroom, you know after the big game. What goes into and what was the thinking behind so many of the ads this time around in terms of style and who they wanted to target. Yeah, well I think you know, there are a couple of big trends, uh this go around. There is definitely a return to celebrity. I was trying to to create create some bang for the buck. So you know, we saw that,
um the sports figures and the Michaelo bad. We saw the actors and the Nissan ad Um star power with Amazon and Alexa, so that there's a big swing in terms of m brands opening up their paychecks or their pocketbooks to U try to get to gain attention. I think the other thing was it a younger audience too though? Were they trying to go after a younger audience? I think, well, I think they're going after you know, you can see what the figures that they're using. They're going after as
big as swath as they can of the population. They want to people to two people my age or a man at a certain age, but but definitely you know, young people as well. Well. I think that the halftime show was, you know that not an advertiser thing as much as the NFL, but that was an attempt to reach a broad audience as well. Yeah, well it does feel like I mean, look, I'm an elder what they call it, consider an elder millennial, Okay, so closer to forty.
I had no idea they were elder And I gotta tell you, every time I stop at the TV, which was you know, for the four hours that I watched, the whole time, it was someone who I recognized, whether it was the halftime show music from my childhood growing up in you know, in southern California, of course, like people I was listening to in high school, whether it's Snooper,
eminem uh. And then you know the actors and actresses featured in these felms, in these in these ads, it really felt like for the first time that this was a Super Bowl that was geared towards someone my age. We only have about forty seconds left, but then we're gonna come back with you, Josh. Sounds good. Yeah, I definitely think, um, you saw what you didn't see is probably more the bleeding metge of of where technology and social platforms are right now, which is kind of like
talk styled user generated content. Um, that was a big scene three years ago. Some of the brands actually solicited ads from from people in the world. So again, I think this is a moment where brands wanted to own their platform at the Super Bowl. Well, let's get right back to our guest, Josh Mandel, president of advertising at Technicolor Creative Studios. He joins us on the own from
Los Angeles. Technicolor Creative Studios produced twenty nine of the Super Bowl ads last night, which is just an astounding, astounding number. Hey, Josh, Um, really want to know, Josh, are you exhausted? I there's a lot of people who work in their studios who are very tired right now yet? Okay, and when do you when do you start like thinking about the next round? Does it start early or does
it it come like in six months or something? Yeah, you know, it typically picks up around the brand the brands. You know that they're going to be in the super Bowl for sure, were well start conversations with them in September October around the scripts that they're seeing, and then when they walk in on an idea, Um, we're typically working December and January pretty heavily. Okay, Hey, one we gotta know and just ballpark it for us. How much
are these celebs paid to Hawk products? You know? It runs a gamut, right and I think if you're just buying star power, you're probably talking millions. Um, But a lot of times there's you know, maybe a movie coming up or a TV show that they could use a little bit of extra energy and getting the celebrity out there. So it's definitely a sliding scale depending upon what the situation is. But if you see a star in one of these spots that you haven't seen maybe in a
couple of years. Like we're talking like you know, between one and ten million dollars for for thirty second or sixty second ad. Yeah, I don't like I probably not a size ten. But um, if you're if you're talking about somebody who's who's definitely got current star power, and um, the majority of us watching the spot will be excited to see them in it than brands are are are plenty enough for that. So like the Toyota, keeping up with the Jones is, like, who do you first reach
out to? Is it Nick Jonas? Like to get him on board? Because that ad didn't work unless you got them all right or at least or you needed some different Jones. Is there are a lot of Jonases Carol, Well, there's a lot of jonas is, but you wanted a lot of Jonas brothers, famous Jones. If there are a lot of a lot of contingencies built in. I've been involved, not my current job, but I have been involved with
ads where we're locking the talent the night before I shoot. So, um, you're definitely you're definitely looking at a few different solutions based on the creative concept. Um creativity and I feel like this latest round of commercials it was really fun to watch. And I'll be honest with their seasons, you know, where I'm like flipping through them because I'm like, okay, not entertaining, not entertaining. Um, a lot of technology and you just think about visually what you can do nowadays,
it's just mind blowing. Um. How do you think about, you know, involving technology into ads or is it based on what the customer wants or what's that creative process? Like Matt, Yeah, I mean our our companies founded on using technology in order to bring these these big ideas of the streams to life. So UM, I think what you're getting into this idea of creativity is Um, it's kind of the difference. I say, there's a difference between running and out on the Super Bowl and actually making
a Super Bowl ad. Um. And if you're walking into the game with ambition and really wanting to own the moment, then then you're gonna come up with concepts and executions that require an awful lot of work from a production company. You've got usually a named director attached to it, and then that's just the VFX company kind of making sure that the car that's flying through the air looks real, right. Um.
I think that's the difference. You can see the difference in the brands who who understand the creativity is a lot of times the force multiplier in our business. Um, it's one thing to spend the money in show up on the super Bowl, but if you're not kind of owning the moment, then um, then you know your dollars have better spend elsewhere. Who writes copy for these uh, that's it's sent by the agencies and advertising agencies. So they'll come up with the concept and they'll uh script
it up in uh partnership with the brand. And then once they've got to create a concept, that's where we get involved. And then what do you guys bring to it? So Freaks and Sick, which we worked with Pepsi and le Gary Gray and Production Company on the three minute
teaser for the Half Don Show. So, um, if you saw that spot, you'll know that Eminem was in a rock battle with his younger self and and the words that we're appearing in the air, that's all digital work that we're doing in order to bring that to life. So that would have been a concept that the agency came up with M and M was in a rap bottom with himself. And then once we understand what the concept is, we step in and say how it can be executed and for what level of visual fidelity we
could pull it off. This time around, social as much as linear. Like, you know, we're talking a lot about the ads that we saw in the middle of the game, but social is a big component of it. How how important was social this time around? Well, yeah, I think you saw a real split between brands who got their work out early as well as brands that we're waiting for the moment um and didn't leak it out early.
I think when you're talking about to a media spend and and you guys highlighted that before, that's just the media spend of six point five millions of the average. Most brands want a average that as much as they can, so they'll they'll go out um early, they'll get it out on social channels, they'll at least hease it a bit and then hopefully, you know, um, if the spots popular, then they'll actually carry over for a week or two
after the Super Bowl. What about when it comes to calls to action And you know, we saw a lot of QR codes uh in. This one, coin Base had a QR code uh in, and of course the Rocket Mortgage one had that QR code for stock x uh in it as well. Right, Yeah, I mean, the how many people are actually utilizing that. I'm sure that the my hands were deep in nachos. I'm just gonna tell
you that I was not pulling out my phone. Yeah, the coin Base one probably got some some it was just so uh you know, the mystery of what that thing was dancing around the screen. I'm sure got a lot of reaction to it. Um. But you know, you guys will remember a number of years ago, UM few R codes were introduced and and flopped pretty quickly. Took
the pandemic forget catch exactly right. I think it's the pandemic and the and the use in restaurants that went into a real world, real world use case, and now I think we'll be seeing more and more of them. Well, what's funny is coin Base after they put out that ad um, they crashed. I think during that was like trending on social Um. We've got a story that their back up after addage reports falling that Super Bowl, So it definitely did it can I just ask you that
Uber eats one Uber Don't eat. How many times did you though? Initially played to your group and they're like, wait, I don't get it, Like, but it was clever because it made us talk about it. But was there folks in your you know, focus groups are like what, Yeah, I'm not sure about the development of that. I wasn't involved in the front end of it, but uh, look, that was another fun one. I think they did some great casting totally. The actors that they had in there
really carried a lot of the story. Hey, listen, just got about thirty seconds left. There is there an ad you didn't do that? You're like, wow, that was pretty nice. Just quickly. I thought that the Dorito's Cheetos ad was fun. There was a nice energy to that, and when it started to go on longer than the thirty a little surprise. But I think they carried the day was that one. I know that one was in the top five the animals, right,
just because it's our own baby. It was really really fond of the rocket corner to one that you guys played earlier. It's pretty cool. Yeah, it's getting a lot of attention today. I gotta tell anytime you put animals like talking and acting like humans. UM all in on that. I'm just all in Josh, this was fun. Um, good luck. I'm sure you're thinking about well at least got a few months where we have to think about the next round of Super Bowl ads. Josh Mendel present advertising a
Technicolor Creative Studios. What you and I were in touch with the noon, cries the CEO of Mattell. He sent us a statement. Barbie was excited to be asked to start alongside Anna Kendrick and Rocket Mortages super Bowl ad man. Barbie just having a whole other life. Man, I kind of love in it.