Weekly LOL: When a CMO places a big bet on the Super Bowl

0 Shares 0 Flares ×

If there’s any B2B ad attracting major attention this week, it’s Adobe’s “The Gambler” running before the big game takes over TVs across the world on Sunday night.

The one-minute spot, which began airing on late-night TV this week, features Adobe showing how advertising in the Super Bowl can be a risky bet for CMOs.

The TV and video campaign, made by Goodby Silverstein & Partners and directed by feature film director J.C. Chandor, begins with two men sitting at a bar watching the Super Bowl on TV. One of the guys is an anxiety-ridden businessman in a suit, and the other is a barfly gambler.

“How much you in for?” asks the gambler, assuming the businessman is betting on the game. When the CMO replies, “$4 million,” the gambler looked shocked.

“And the scariest part is, it’s not even my money. There are going to be a lot of unhappy people if this doesn’t pay off,” the CMO says.

He’s talking about his 30-second TV ad, of course, for his cream cheese brand. And when it airs to a tepid response, the gambler buys the CMO a drink.

The ad ends with the question, “Do you know what your marketing is doing?”

The ad is the latest in a series of humorous spots for Adobe Marketing Cloud — including its 2013 “Click Baby, Click” and last year’s “Mean Streets” — which show what can happen when CMOs don’t know what their marketing dollars are doing, as AdAge writes.

Adobe has never bought an ad in the Super Bowl, and decided to capitalize on this “moment in time” in which marketers are thinking about advertising.

“The biggest place we’re advertising is in the spaces that host conversations around the Super Bowl,” said Alex Amado, VP-experience marketing at Adobe. “It’s a great place to reinforce our message about Adobe Marketing Cloud and being data-driven.”

As AdAge writes, the campaign also includes a large social media effort, including paid advertising on Twitter and LinkedIn. “LinkedIn works really well for us from a B2B perspective, because we can target our key audience — marketers — by their titles,” Amado said.

Photo via YouTube screenshot