State Farm Brilliantly Fooled Us All During The Last Dance

With sporting events canceled across all professional leagues, Sunday night's broadcast of the ESPN documentary series The Last Dance drew together a huge audience starved for content. Only a few sponsors were allowed in for the event, and with apologies to Reese's, it's pretty clear that State Farm won the night. The insurer took viewers on a quick, wild and head-spinning ride with one of advertising's best head fakes in recent memory. The spot began with what seemed like archival ESPN SportsCenter footage from 1998, when the Chicago Bulls won their third consecutive championship. Such footage was to be expected, given that viewers were there to watch the first two episodes of a documentary series about the Bulls' 1997-98 season. But then things started to get ... creepy. [kickout id="1"] As the ad continues, it becomes increasingly clear that longtime broadcaster Kenny Mayne was not, in fact, one of history's greatest prognosticators, but was instead simply deepfaking himself by adding new audio onto archival footage. Sometime around "it's going to be lit," you realize you've been duped. The promo was developed by ESPN CreativeWorks, in collaboration with Optimum Sports and Translation. The spot generated quick and copious buzz on social media, with most giving State Farm credit for a cleverly convincing misdirect. [kickout id="2"] [kickout id="3"] [kickout id="4"] [kickout id="5"] [kickout id="6"] The spot actually debuted via an NBA tweet a day before the documentary began airing: [kickout id="7"] For those who aren't completely up to speed on your football vernacular, the "butt fumble" referenced in the spot was a 2012 play during a Thanksgiving Day game between the New York Jets and New England Patriots. Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez slammed into the butt of teammate Brandon Moore, leading to a Patriots fumble recovery and runback for a touchdown. It's generally remembered as one of of football's most embarrassing moments, likely because it came in conjunction with the Jets' other embarrassing flubs in the same quarter, resulting in three Patriots touchdowns in less than a minute. Who could have predicted such a bizarre event? Only Kenny Mayne, apparently. CREDITS ESPN CreativeWorks Carrie Brzezinski-Hsu: VP, CreativeWorks and Multimedia Sponsorship Integration Jay Marrotte: Senior Creative Director Jamie Overkamp: Creative Director Andy Truong: Writer Anthony Nelson: VP, Production Kyle Wright: Senior Director, Production Nick Aquilino: Producer Nicole Gartner: Senior Social Media Branded Content Specialist Colin Ryan: Disney Ad Sales Manager Agency: Translation, LLC Chief Executive Officer and Founder: Steve Stoute Head of Client Services: Susanna Swartley Group Creative Director: Alex Kaplan Group Creative Director: Barry Katz Art Director: Dupree Bostic Copywriter: Lucas Kelly Group Account Director: Julia Farber Account Executive: Stephen Rich Assistant Account Executive: Bridget Derraugh Group Strategy Director: John McBride Strategy Director: Shani Syphrett Strategist: Megan Mundo Group Context Director: Joel Rodriguez Context Director: Evan Auerbach Senior Context Strategist: Jay Legaspi Senior Data Analyst: Jineen Carcamo Senior Project Manager: Ali Schurz

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State Farm and Kenny Mayne Brilliantly Faked Us All Out During The Last Dance

Viewers of the documentary weren't sure what was happening

David Griner

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David Griner