Newcastle Brown Ale unveils ‘Band of Brands’ Super Bowl Ad
38 companies create first-ever crowdfunded Super Bowl commercial
In a fiscally conservative approach to Super Bowl XLIX advertising, Newcastle Brown Ale, a beer brand of Heineken USA, White Plains, N.Y., suggested to other brands that they all join forces for a collaborative Super Bowl ad. The result is the world’s first crowdfunded Super Bowl ad.
The resulting Newcastle “Band of Brands” spotalso features the following companies and brands: amerimerch.com, aprilumbrellas.com, Armstrong Flooring and Ceilings, Beanitos Chips, Blettner Engineering, Boost Mobile, Brawny Paper Towels, Charisma, Detroit Beard Collective, District 78, Dixie, East End Leisure Co., Gladiator GarageWorks, Hello Products Oral Care, Hunt's Tomatoes, JackThreads, Jockey, Kern Group Security, Kibo Active + Leisure Wear, Krave Jerky, Las Vegas, Lee Jeans, match.com, McClure’s Pickles, Mr. Cheese O's, Polished Dental, Quilted Northern, Quinn Popcorn, Rosarita Beans, Ro*tel, Second Chance Custom, Sharper Image, Tessemae’s All-Natural Dressings, The Ross Farm, Vanity Fair Napkins, yp.com and Zendure Batteries.
Newcastle originally introduced the “Band of Brands” concept with an online video featuring “Parks and Recreation” star Aubrey Plaza calling for brands to join the project in exchange for a small contribution.
“Our goal here is to make history and sell great beer,” said Priscilla Flores Dohnert, brand director for Newcastle Brown Ale, in a statement. “We weren’t going to let our tiny budget stand in the way of taking home the Big Game glory for the second year in a row.
“Not only did we create the world’s first crowdfunded Big Game ad, but I’m pretty sure we just made the cheapest Big Game ad ever,” Dohnert continued. “By asking other brands to team up with our brand, we are making a statement that Big Game advertising should be accessible to everyone, whether they can afford it or not.”
Todd Fletcher, vice president of marketing of Tessamae’s All-Natural Dressings, one of the other featured brands, added in a statement: “Airing a Big Game ad is something I never thought we’d be able to do, but the idea of just tossing our name into Newcastle’s existing work was too good to pass up. I’m excited for our brand to get in front of fractions of portions of shares of millions of eyeballs.”
The “Band of Brands” program was created by Newcastle in partnership with Droga5, Fast Horse and MediaVest, as part of Newcastle’s long-running “No Bollocks” campaign, which takes a lighthearted, no-nonsense, honest approach to marketing by shining a light on the silly, stale and sometimes deceptive clichés often found in beer advertising.
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