SimpliSafe’s Super Bowl Teaser Turns Nextdoor-Style Posts Into Thriller Material

The 30-second video features drone-like suburbanites chanting anxious queries and vague warnings of the kind you might see in Nextdoor posts over a frantic, slow-build score that tracks with their neighbor’s descent into sleepless insanity.

“Janet saw a creepy guy in the cul-de-sac last night … Someone’s been stealing packages. My son bought a snake on the dark web,” the neighbors chant, their voices growing increasingly distorted.

The full-length ad, helmed by creative shop Preacher, is set to air during the end of the first quarter on Sunday, marking the first Super Bowl appearance from the Boston-based brand. SimpliSafe also plans to release a 60-second extended cut of the spot online.

While the teaser makes light of trivial worries on social media, a SimpliSafe spokesperson said the full-length ad will take on real, more topical concerns pervasive in modern life.

“SimpliSafe’s new Super Bowl ad teaser pokes fun at a well-known neighborhood type: the social media fear-monger,” the brand said in a statement. “This Sunday, the home security leaders take on automation, big tech, the 24-hour news cycle and more hyper-contemporary causes for concern.”

SimpliSafe has been around for more than a decade, but chief marketing officer Melina Engel said the brand hasn’t focused much on building its brand awareness profile beyond the 3 million customers it claims to serve until now. The brand is hoping to change that with this Sunday’s ad, which is part of a larger television advertising blitz for the brand.