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.

In the weeks before the Super Bowl, a small group on Reddit, called r/WallStreetBets, disrupted the financial world by driving up the price of GameStop stock. A media frenzy quickly ensued, sparking debate from Wall Street to Washington.

With a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity standing before the brand, Reddit wanted to capitalize on the moment and champion the power of Reddit users to achieve incredible things. So, we disrupted the ad world by hacking the Super Bowl. But the Reddit community is notoriously anti-advertising, so we had to do it in a way that remained true to the brand. And we only had a week, from presentation to production to air.

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