Fox Tells Super Bowl Viewers to Take Off Work the Next Day for ‘Super Monday’

As Fox hosts its first Super Bowl since it spun off into a new company last March ahead of the Disney deal, the network wants to extend Sunday’s festivities into what it’s calling Super Monday. And it’s offering viewers who take that day off the opportunity to win $10,000. The network’s “Super Monday” campaign, which kicked off during the final weekend of the NFL regular season on Dec. 29, features the “Mayor of Monday” (played by Saturday Night Live alum Finesse Mitchell, who appears in Fox’s new sitcom, Outmatched) telling sluggish office workers that he has created a new holiday. He urges them to “take off the Monday after the Super Bowl … spend your Super Monday with Fox.” (Paul Lieberstein, channeling his Toby character from The Office, reminds his coworkers that Super Monday isn’t a real holiday.) [kickout id="1" label="Listen to Fox's Mayor of Monday"] [kickout id="2" label="For Those Asking"] Fox—pointing to research showing that 17 million people took the Monday off following last year’s Super Bowl—is offering viewers the chance to win a $10,000 “bonus” by taking off Monday and then tweeting #SuperMonday. [kickout id="3" label="Sweepstakes"] “We talk about how the Super Bowl is all but a holiday. And in fact, we think you should enjoy the Super Bowl on Fox, stay up late and enjoy The Masked Singer and then tell your boss in advance that you're taking Super Monday as well,” said Fox Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier. Instead of going to work hungover and tired, the promos suggest, viewers can stay up Sunday to watch the whole Super Bowl and the Season 3 premiere of The Masked Singer, which airs after the game. Then they can “relax” Monday by watching Fox shows, including new episodes of 9-1-1: Lone Star and Prodigal Son, which air that night. The campaign creative was shot in three days and completed in-house at Fox, overseen by evp of marketing Darren Schillace and head of creative Scott Edwards, with production help from Canyon Road Films. The network created more than 15 spots in all, though some will air only on social platforms. The Super Monday spots debuted Dec. 29 during the final week of the NFL season, and also aired during the Seattle Seahawks-Philadelphia Eagles wild card game on Jan. 5, the Seattle Seahawks-Green Bay Packers divisional playoff game on Jan. 19 and the San Francisco 49ers-Green Bay Packers NFC Championship on Jan. 19. Spots also aired during entertainment programming. The promos will continue to air before, during and after the game on Super Bowl Sunday, as well as on Super Monday itself. “It's been a really fun way to not just highlight our programming but also to do something that I haven't seen other host networks do, which is try to create a campaign that is bigger than the (in-game network) promos themselves,” Collier said. He noted earned impressions from the campaign—including CNBC’s Squawk Box and Access Hollywood—have already “exceeded our expectations.”