Super Bowl Specials: Bryan Buckley

If anyone knows what the Super Bowl means to advertising (and vice versa), it’s Hungry Man honcho Bryan Buckley. The veteran director has been there, done it and got the airtime – whether it be for brands like Cash4Gold, which built its whole business off the back of its game-day commercial years ago, or Tide, where the client believed in its spot so much last year it took a big gamble and doubled its length at the eleventh hour.

Returning to the event this year with a typically healthy raft of work - which you can bet your life on will make the pick of the bunch (but his tongue-in-cheek spot for SodaStream has already been banned!) - Buckley is as enthusiastic about the Super Bowl as ever. Below, he offers his thoughts on its significance to the ad calendar, directing as a sport in itself and why the Super Bowl keeps sucking him in.

What does the Super Bowl mean to you?

It’s the ultimate advertising event. There’s nothing that comes close to it without a doubt and it’s an opportunity to capture the audience. I think the game itself is strange because it’s a one-game elimination, unlike most big US sports where there’s a seven-game series, so the attention puts all eyes there and everyone’s amped up from that standpoint because football is just massive in this country. But then you have what’s become an event itself, the advertising, which is certainly also front and centre.

How much pressure is there involved in shooting for the Super Bowl?

You know it’s funny; clients are actually much more eager and I find that people are more willing to take risks in this situation. If they’ve gone the distance to hire me, at this point – and I’ve been there a lot – I’m going to make as much noise as anybody if I don’t think they’re heading down the right path.

You have to push it. Clients know it and last year was a really good example, with Tide; that was a 30-second spot which the client, on the Thursday before the game said, ‘you know what, I think we should get the 60, I’m going to buy the official time’ and so then on the Friday he bought the time. It was unheard of. Never [been done] before.

Most clients are shipping over a week prior to the game on the Friday. It’s a prime example of an extremely bold decision to switch from a 30 to 60 at almost double the budget, but they put all the chips down and won. That’s high stakes but he knew it and sometimes you know you have the spot.

Will events like this and the Oscars always warrant demand for the traditional 30-second TVC?

The Oscars are such a far cry from the Super Bowl. Advertisers are made or broken during one day; it’s the most amazing thing. There are advertisers like Cash 4 Gold that have checked in there and built their whole business overnight. 

Basically you can hit the Super Bowl heavy and you still get the word of mouth, it continues to follow through in the next few days after the event but then you’re still hearing people talking about the spots a year later, and the year after that. There really is nothing like that, and there’s so much value in it for an advertiser.

How has advertising at the Super Bowl changed over the years from what you’ve seen?

You usually find it’s a reflection of a combination between current entertainment and where the economy stands. But every year it does change. From what I’ve seen, the celebrity element dominates. There are tonnes of film references and celebrity work and you can have online but you can’t just rely on that, it still needs to be entertaining within the 30 or 60 seconds.

What’s the recipe for Super Bowl success for an advertiser?

It’s funny because I always quote directing and film as being sort of like a sport; it’s very similar. You go in there with a blueprint of what the game’s going to be, there’s your board, but then when you get into the actual day of shooting, the weather changes, the actor shows up an hour late, this happens and that happens; you’ve got to make all these adjustments and once you’ve made them all you get to the edit and you’re trying to make it better.

Those are all game plan and game day adjustments that often equate to trying to get all that stuff through because people are like, ‘this is what the board was but you have to evolve beyond that’. So the clients that are willing to move with the flow are the most successful ones.

What keeps pulling you back to the Super Bowl? Why do you enjoy working on ads for it?

I think we’ve crossed the 50-spot threshold this year; we’ve got four this year. It’s just so much fun. We can point to Cannes and other award shows and say oh I won this, that and the other thing, but the regular Joe doesn’t know or is likely to not know that work, but everyone knows the work that’s on the game.

To me it’s a combination of creative meets marketing. If you do great marketing, it may not win a single award but it could be something really smart and funny and interesting like Cash4Gold; that thing never saw a single award, but it changed an entire company. You’ve got to appeal to the masses. Nothing really comes close to what we do and it’s just so much fun.

What sort of spots or trends would you like to/think you will see at this year’s event?

The previews have become standard now; and you have in-game and post [ads] after. We have a spot this year that’s a very in-game driven piece of work.

When you put it in front of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people, it’s just crazy. But everyone’s firing on all cylinders, you don’t have to go in there with a complete plan, and it’s not just the spot, it’s all the social aspects around it too.

Where will you be watching and which team are you rooting for?

I’ll be in New York but I’m not going to it. I’m going to go Broncos, I think it’s going to be a great game. I’ve only been to one Super Bowl and it’s a truly amazing event.