Since its long-running “Versus” campaign featuring Rob Lowe drew to a close, Grey launched a campaign featuring Hannah Davis in April, extended the basic premise of “Versus” to ads featuring NFL stars past and present such as Randy Moss, Eli Manning and Tony Romo and launched a campaign mocking cable mergers starring Jeffrey Tambor, Fred Willard, Jennifer Coolidge and John Michael Higgins. Now the agency has launched a new campaign, this time characterizing cable customers as “The Settlers.”
The campaign plays on the word, presenting a frontier-era family in a suburban neighborhood who stick to antiquated ways such as a horse-and-buggy and, oh yeah, cable.
“Consumers may not think of themselves as settlers, but we want them to question why they are settling for cable, and we want them to know they don’t have to settle,” AT&T Entertainment CMO Brad Bentley told AdAge.
“We’re settlers son, we settle for things,” explains the father in “Nieghbors” when his son asks why they can’t have DirecTV like their modern neighbors. Another spot, “Satisfaction” boasts of DirecTV’s outperformance of cable in customer satisfaction, highlighting the family’s own means of satisfaction: a stick and hoop, a faceless doll, cabbages and foot-stomping. The spots will make their broadcast debut December 31 during the College Football Playoffs, and the campaign will continue to run through the first quarter.