Journey of an Auto Ad on Its Drive to the Super Bowl
The road to the Super Bowl for Pontiac ends Sunday with the debut of a commercial featuring the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.
It began with a script dashed off late one night by a 27-year-old ad writer who had been struggling to get his ideas turned into commercials.
Much is riding on the spot. It’s been two decades since Pontiac has appeared in the the most-watched sporting event in the United States, and it is writer Tom Topolewski’s first entry in the Super Bowl of advertising, a high-stakes commercial showcase.
“It’s scary,” said Topolewski. “I just hope people like it, you know, I just hope.”
For advertisers, the Super Bowl is about more than reaching an audience. It’s a way to bathe products in a championship glow--to tout them as stars. In vying for attention, the Super Bowl has become a game of creative one-upmanship, where advertisers willingly spend millions to produce spots that America talks about the next day.
In Coyote, Pontiac thinks it has just such a commercial.
The spot, like the Denver Broncos, is something of a wild-card entry in the Big Game. Pontiac wasn’t thinking about the Super Bowl when it asked advertising agency D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles for ideas to plug the Grand Prix a year ago.
Auto makers typically use the Super Bowl to tout new models--but the Grand Prix had been redesigned in late 1996. There was nothing new to say.
Nonetheless, the idea of having Wile E. Coyote use a Grand Prix to catch--almost--the elusive Road Runner wowed Pontiac managers. And placing the car in a cartoon world would allow them to do something unacceptable in typical car spots: show speed.
“Using cartoon logic, you can appear to go 300 miles per hour, and it works,” said Steve Beck, who directed the spot.
Topolewski didn’t have the Super Bowl on his mind when he thought up the commercial. Working at his third agency in four years, he wanted only to have his idea accepted. Two years earlier, he’d been through a dry spell where every idea he cooked up was rejected.
The journeyman writer based in Detroit thought he had a hot idea--but harbored no illusions.
“In advertising, you try not to get too optimistic,” he said. “You can think up the most brilliant idea, and one day everyone is congratulating you, and the next day, the idea is dead.”
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Though an unlikely advertiser, General Motors’ Pontiac division never behaved like an underdog. The spot took 10 months to test and prepare--longer than it took the Green Bay Packers and the Broncos to prepare for the game itself. Nearly 100 people participated in making the ad--including 40 Warner Bros. animators, 25 digital artists, plus people from the agency, Pontiac and other supporting players.
Camera crews spent two days filming a red Grand Prix weaving circles on an empty airport runway in Santa Rosa, Calif., and another day shooting the car as it sped down a mountain road nearby. From the huge amounts of film, about 20 seconds of footage was used.
A 40-piece orchestra played the background music for the spot.
The process sparked a lively give-and-take. At Warner Bros.’ suggestion, the agency gave the Coyote rocket skates--a weapon he hadn’t yet tried in cartoons. Warner also proposed ending the spot with the Coyote driving past the Road Runner, but, according to Beck, the agency and Pontiac gave that the thumbs down. They wanted to leave room for a sequel.
Throughout the production, Pontiac, Topolewski and his bosses at DMB&B; assessed their chances of victory during the Super Bowl.
Competition is fierce. Veteran advertisers such as Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch and Nike push to air the most creative, best-liked ads. This year, Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch together have bought 20% of the advertising time in the game, allowing them by sheer volume to drown out other messages.
Pontiac plans to air its Coyote ad in the first quarter of the game, betting that’s when fans are most likely to pay attention to a match that Green Bay is expected to win by more than a touchdown. The spot will air again in the post-game show.
“It’s exciting to have worked side-by-side with Pepsi and Nike and all those other companies that do killer advertising,” said Topolewski. “Exciting, but scary.”
Pontiac executives are betting the spot can stand up to anything the beverage companies dish out. One thing they’re relieved about is that with Nissan pulling out of the telecast, Pontiac is the only car advertiser in the game.
“That has to help us,” said Grand Prix brand manager William Heugh.
With advertisers paying $1.3 million for 30 seconds, the risks of advertising in the Super Bowl are super-sized. A bad commercial can quickly turn a product into a national joke--witness Burger King’s failed 1986 Herb the Nerd ad.
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History isn’t on Pontiac’s side. Gallup & Robinson reports that with one exception--last year’s Nissan spot with flying pigeons--viewers rate Super Bowl car ads as dull, dull, dull.
“Too often car companies run old ads,” said Scott Purvis, president of the polling firm. He said ingredients to success on the Super Bowl are freshness and humor.
In the spot, the Coyote uses rocket skates to try to catch up with the Road Runner, but fails. Emerging from an Acme crate is Coyote’s latest weapon--a Grand Prix. Taking the wheel, he barrels up twisting mountain roadways with ease until he is almost close enough to grab the Road Runner.
Before committing to the Coyote spot, Pontiac and Topolewski’s colleagues at DMB&B; had some concerns. Though popular, the Looney Tune characters weren’t new to product pitchdom.
Pepsi had teamed the Looney Tunes duo with athlete Deion Sanders in a 1996 Super Bowl spot seen by millions. Before that, GM rival Chrysler used the characters to pitch its Plymouth Road Runner 25 years earlier.
“We do not want to be perceived as ripping off these commercials,” said Brian Durocher, the DMB&B; vice president who supervises the Pontiac account.
Durocher also worried that the ad would fit with Grand Prix’s existing campaign, which uses quirky analogies--such as too thin tightropes--to demonstrate the benefits of the car’s wider wheel base.
Two rounds of consumer testing, in which several hundred people were shown the spots, put those worries to rest. Research showed that the spot ranked among the top 5% of all automotive ads--besides being the most popular Pontiac spot ever tested. People understood it and liked it.
“It was apparent to everyone that this was a spot that couldn’t be denied,” Durocher said.
The Super Bowl is a strategic departure for Pontiac, which last year bought time in the less expensive post-game show to plug the redesigned Grand Prix. Top executives congratulated themselves on the move when ratings showed that 70% of the Super Bowl audience watched the show.
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This year is different, Pontiac says.
“The Super Bowl is where everybody is bringing their best,” said Jim Vurpillant, assistant brand manager for the Grand Prix. “The Super Bowl has really evolved into the Super Bowl of advertising, where some people tune in to see the ads. . . . We believe we have an ad that is right for the game.”
The spot does more than give Grand Prix a boost. Warner Bros. embraced the spot because it helps bring two of its classic characters into the present, before a huge TV audience.
For DMB&B;, the Super Bowl is an opportunity to show off while changing the way consumers view car ads. “We think this ad is an award-winner,” said Durocher.
For his part, Topolewski is thrilled. “Three years ago, I didn’t make anything. Now I’m in the Super Bowl.”
