HOW TO BE FAMOUS: SUPER BOWL 2023

by Madison McGuire

Downy Unstopables gracefully cuts through the clutter of other Super Bowl ads by launching almost two months early.

It is no secret in the advertising world that a Super Bowl commercial might be the most sought after minute to 30 seconds in all of advertising. If you spent the $7 million on a spot, why not spend a little extra to build momentum into the campaign? 

Downy, a Procter and Gamble owned brand, began running a campaign in December 2022 called, “Believe” that will put proof behind Downy's claim of “12 weeks of freshness”. In the spots created by Saatchi & Saatchi and Woven Collaborative, there is a masked, or rather “shirted” celebrity that is skeptical about just how long Downy Unstoppables keeps your clothes smelling fresh. “I will keep sniffing until the Super Bowl,” says the mystery man. 

This celebrity spokesperson’s identity may be obvious to some viewers, but in case no one picks up on the hints in the first commercial, the brand released (and is still releasing) six to seven more commercials with easter eggs about who this person is. I have had my eye on the shelf in the background with a couple of Oscars, amongst other trophies. I guess we will have to wait until the second quarter of the Super Bowl to find out for sure. 

My personal favorite commercial in the series is the holiday spot where “Nana” paid this celebrity a visit, and she LOVES the smell of her laundry (which has also been placed over her head). “I wish you would just stop talking,” Nana says, because it is just that good. 

This kind of soft-launch into a giant campaign is the perfect way to gain the traction you need leading up to the big game. That, “Oh, I saw this on Instagram a while ago” reaction is exactly what Downy is hoping for. Besides the avid Super Bowl commercial followers and predictors, this kind of beforehand marketing will get everyone excited to know who the hidden person is. 

In the third step of How to be Famous, we advise agencies to stop piling on top of their ideas. “One perfectly executed idea will cut through the clutter better than a dozen middling ones,” we preach. This Downy campaign so gracefully cuts through the clutter of other Super Bowl ads simply by letting everyone know that it is coming.

Creatively speaking, this is no block-buster commercial, but the idea is perfectly curated to keep consumers on their feet and lead into the big reveal. Consumers won’t just find out who is behind the shirt, but there will be some testimony behind the brand’s freshness guarantee. 

This isn’t the first time that Downy Unstoppables has advertised during the Super Bowl, however. In 2012, a spot aired starring “Mean” Joe Greene of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The ad playfully mimicked the age old Coca Cola commercial starring Joe Greene, where the tiny fan offers him his own bottle of Coke after a game. They “freshened up” the old commercial by offering Joe Greene a bottle of Downy Unstoppables, but when he goes to throw his jersey at the fan, she sniffs it and says, “Ugh, no thanks, Mean Joe,” (since he clearly hadn’t been introduced to the Downy product yet). 

I, for one, am hoping that the celebrity spokesperson is someone completely underwhelming, and we can all chuckle about it after. Or maybe, in the spirit of football, Downy is running a fake and it will be Mean Joe Greene again! A girl can dream.