Tubi Super Bowl Commercial Made People Fight With Their Families
A Tubi commercial tricked viewers into thinking somebody nabbed the remote to stream Mr. and Mrs. Smith during last night's Super Bowl; watch for yourself below.
If you yelled at your family members during Tubi’s Super Bowl commercial last night, you weren’t alone. The streaming service came up with a clever, though rage-inducing at the time, ad that had everyone convinced someone was messing with the remote. Check out the ad below:
Tubi’s Super Bowl spot made it seem like the commercial break was over and that Super Bowl LVII had returned. They even got commentators Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen on screen, fully selling the illusion. Then the streaming service popped up on the screen, scrolled around for a couple of seconds, and settled on the Brangelina spy thriller Mr. and Mrs. Smith as a preferable choice to the big game.
While Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a solid movie, it’s fairly unlikely that a room full of sports fans would appreciate someone in the room throwing that on when the biggest football game of the year was on. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the ad was titled ‘Interface Interruption,’ and Tubi was very intentionally trying to create some mischief. As evidenced by the fact that they partnered with a company called Mischief for the spot, whose CCO Greg Hahn remarked, “Tubi is poised to be the troublemaker of the streaming world.”
It probably didn’t help that Super Bowl LVII was such a close game. The Kansas City Chiefs faced off against the Philadelphia Eagles at State Farm Arena in Phoenix, Arizona and there was no point where victory was assured for either team. When a game is that close, especially if you’re a big fan of either team, you don’t want someone switching over to the Tubi streaming service.
You could certainly tell that Tubi was trying to make a big impression with its Super Bowl ad spots, as the ‘Interface Interruption’ spot wasn’t the only ad rubbing people the wrong way. The streaming service also aired a series of ads that featured disturbingly large rabbits dragging or coaxing people down a content ‘rabbit hole.’ With Super Bowl ads costing millions of dollars, it certainly seems like Tubi at least wanted people to remember them.
From a marketing standpoint, their tactics seem to be working. While their fake-out ad may have caused a blip of family drama, it certainly got people’s attention and got them talking on social media. And while the Tubi rabbit ads were disturbing in many ways, they had the same effect on viewers.
If your goal is to get people talking and make them remember your ads even while there is a big game going on and tons of other ads, Tubi seems to have achieved it. People are still talking about it, and that will likely lead to at least some new subscribers. Fox Corporation acquired the streaming platform in 2020, so it seems like they felt this was the right year to push it.
As of January 2022, Tubi has over 51 million active monthly users. It’ll be interesting to see if those numbers go up following the Super Bowl spots. Stay tuned for more news on Tubi and other major streaming services.
