In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, a small group on Reddit, called r/WallStreetBets, took the financial world by storm, challenging the system by driving up the prices on seemingly underwhelming stocks. A media frenzy quickly ensued across the nation, including Washington, DC, sparking debate as to whether or not this was any different from what goes on at hedge funds.

With a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity standing before us, Reddit had to do something to capitalize on the moment and champion the power of small groups of Reddit users to achieve incredible things. So, what better way than to hack the Super Bowl? But the Reddit community is notoriously tough and very anti-advertising, so we had to do it in a way that remained true to the brand. Oh, and we only had a week to make the commercial, from presentation to production to air.

The idea was simple: Let’s disrupt the ad world, just like our Reddit users disrupted the financial world, by airing a 5-second, low budget commercial on the Super Bowl, proving that small groups (and small brands) can achieve some pretty massive things.

Gone are the days when Super Bowl commercials would amaze us on game night, because nowadays everything is so hyped and pre-released ahead of time that it takes away any element of surprise. So, to play to the moment the Reddit brand was having, and mirror what our users had just done to disrupt the financial world the week before, with GameStop, we wanted to shock the world and make it seem like Reddit just hacked the Super Bowl too - disrupting the ad world.

As the ad said, our bet paid off, because people really thought we hacked CBS, something that wouldn’t have been possible had we teased it. The press also ate it up, because it was a refreshing change of pace, to not already know everything that was going to happen before it happened, which is perhaps why we wound up with 6.5 Billion impressions.

The Super Bowl is one of the toughest places in advertising to make noise, especially when commercials cost $10 million on average, loaded with celebrities and special effects. Which is why we zagged, with a long-copy, 5-second spot, featuring a jpeg.

It not only stood out like a sore thumb, we purposefully made it seem like we were hacking the broadcast, starting with a glitchy, branded, old-school “please stand by” art card. This gave way to a static long-copy slide, which spoke to the Reddit community and their mindset, championing the power of small groups of passionate people to achieve amazing things.

Too long for anyone to read, the ad forced viewers to either pause, rewind or go online to get the message, which was loaded with easter eggs, including a nod to the sub-Reddit “r/superbowl,” which is actually “Superb Owl,” home to a group of passionate owl lovers.

Our 5-second ad was the most watched (and rewatched) of the game, hauling in a staggering 6.5 billion impressions. To put that in context, that’s almost double the impressions earned by the most expensive Super Bowl ad of all time, “It’s a Tide Ad,” which ran multiple 30-second commercials throughout the entire game.

Superb Owl was covered by more than 300 media outlets, with the likes of The New York Times and Fast Company considering it the best commercial of the night, while others claimed it to be the best of all time.

But most importantly, we drove record numbers to the site, with traffic spiking by over 25%, ultimately crashing the website itself!