KRAFT – SUPER BOWL LII

Role: Creative Director
Studio: The Mill
Agency: Leo Burnett

“We want you to make a Super Bowl commercial in real time, using viewer submitted photos, and air it during the game.”
~SVP, Leo Burnett

And so began five months of preparation for a one day production. It’s worth noting that :30 seconds of air time runs around $5 million and over 111 million people would be watching. So you know, no pressure...

The concept was to feature real families through a montage of their own photos and videos, crowdsourced on game day, under the campaign query of “how do you family?” Kraft's goal was to raise brand awareness under their Family Greatly banner, knowing that 70% of viewers watch the game with their family. Kraft has been around for almost 100 years and their +130 products are in 90% of U.S. households, but no one was talking about them! That is, until we gave them a reason to… Hey, wanna be on TV?

The logistics involved with such a production were understandably challenging. We needed to (1) produce ads to encourage families to submit their photos and videos, (2) a team to “scrape" for our hashtags and download submissions, (3) a team to select the best submissions, (4) a team to get legal releases from everyone featured in each image, before it could be (5) used by the editorial team, and eventually (6) our animators and finishing artists. To complicate matters even further, we had to remove logos in over 200 approved photos and videos, including the numbers on NFL jerseys!

By halftime, all of our planning and rehearsing had paid off. We uploaded our finished ad for the network, and everyone involved – clients and creatives alike – gathered together to watch the :30 montage air LIVE! In the end, we received over 25,000 unique submissions and #FamilyGreatly was the second most used hashtag of all Super Bowl advertisers. Cue the end zone celebration!

CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT

PRESS

  • Production Company: The Mill

    Executive Producer: Andrew Sommerville
    Creative Director: Jeff Boddy
    Lead Motion Designer: TJ Sochor
    Designers: Devin Hayes, Anzie Lee, Adrian Navarro, Matt Darnall, John Filipkowski, Anna Tes, Lauren Indovina, Mariah Hourihan, Amador Valenzuela
    2D Lead: Randy McEntee
    2D Artists: Jamie Beckwith, Heidi Anderson, Alison Bloom, Andrew Pellicer, Jamin Clutcher

    Head of Engineering: Tom Taylor
    Head of Operations: Colette Murray
    Datalab Manager: DJ Miranda
    Production Assistant: Kate Ryan

    Editorial: Whitehouse Post

    Editor: Deb Schimmel
    Edit Assist: Steve Kroodsma
    Head of Production: JoJo Scheerer
    Tech: Lucas Shira