After a quick attempt at entering Doritos’ “Crash The Super Bowl” competition, Droga5 began enlisting brands for Newcastle’s “Band of Brands” crowdsourced Super Bowl ad campaign, with help from Aubrey Plaza. Now, around a week after the last teaser with Plaza, the brand has revealed Droga5’s big game ad, featuring 37 different brands. The 60-second spot will run regionally in only one market: Palm Springs, California. But, like last year’s campaign, it’s sure to attract its share of attention online.
As you might expect, “Band of Brands” is a whirlwind of brand placement and big market advertising parody. Opening, appropriately enough, with a couple opening up some bottles of Newcastle, the ad manages to name drop Match and Armstrong Flooring in the first ten seconds. The pace only picks up from there as the ad gets more over-the-top and self-effacing about its brand references. At one point, the man looks at his watch and runs upstairs to pitch Charisma bedding, passing by a host of signs for other brands along the way. While the ad is basically the one joke we’ve been expecting from “Band of Brands” all along, it handles it entertainingly enough and the ad fits in well with the tone of the brand’s previous campaigns — even if it doesn’t have the staying power of last year’s “If We Made It.”
“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,” said Priscilla Flores Dohnert, brand director for Newcastle Brown Ale, in a statement. “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.”