Schick Top, A-B InBev’s faux-craft brand, unveiled a teaser for its Super Bowl ad from Anomaly, the brand’s first big game effort, starring T.J. Miller (of Silicon Valley, this recent Smirnoff campaign).
Miller opens the spot by first talking up his own brand, saying, “Hi, I’m me, If you don’t who I am then I don’t know what’s wrong with you…” continuing with the rant before getting around to how he’s “shooting an unfiltered commercial for an unfiltered beer.” That connection is based on a pretty flimsy selling point, as virtually all beer in the style is unfiltered, but then this is a brand that operates on an assumption of consumer ignorance. At any rate, Anomaly and Miller run with the approach, as the ad has an irreverent style reminiscent of Droga5’s approach for Newcastle. Miller and fellow comedian Martin Montana, who joins Miller as the Shock Top brand mascot Wedgehead around the one-minute mark, even ad libbed their exchange, according to Schock Top brand vice president Jake Kirsch.
“T.J. Miller embodies the brand, the irreverence, the wit,” Kirsch told Adweek. “We tell people to ‘Live Life Unfiltered,’ we’re an unfiltered beer, and T.J. is at the top of the list of people like that.”
He explained to the publication that the brand has struggled to maintain growth in recent years, saying “The biggest piece of that challenge is that while we’re available, the majority of people don’t know who we are. And it’s awfully hard, even if you’re available, to get people to try you if they don’t know you.”
And how do you get people to know who you are? The Super Bowl, of course.
“If we’re going to relaunch, reignite, restage … it’s about how do we reach as many people as possible and get known and filter through that clutter? And the Super Bowl is a great platform to do that with,” he added.