If you watched the Super Bowl this year, you most likely saw Chevy’s apocalypse commercial. Pretty funny stuff. Did you catch the Twinkie connection?
General Motors has pronounced itself pleased with its elaborate efforts to draw attention to the three commercials it bought for its Chevrolet division during the Super Bowl.
One of those commercials, “2012,” memorably poked fun at speculation that, according to the Mayan calendar, the world will end this year. The commercial, by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, part of the Omnicom Group, showed the only survivors of a cataclysm — wrought by disasters like an alien invasion, heinous weather and volcano eruptions — to be owners of Chevy Silverado trucks.
At the end of the commercial, as frogs start to fall from the sky, the survivors share what seems to be the only food to have survived the apocalypse: a box of Twinkies.
It is rare for one brand’s ad to feature another brand made by another company, but the “2012” spot was one of two in Super Bowl XLVI that did so. (A commercial for General Electric showed how turbines made by G.E. helped power breweries that make Budweiser beer.)
The appearance of Twinkies in “2012” was a nod to decades of jokes about their recipe guaranteeing their longevity.
The creative team at Goodby, Silverstein was seeking a funny answer to this question, said Joel Ewanick, global chief marketing officer at General Motors in Detroit: “After this catastrophe, what’s going to be left?”
The approval of the Twinkies parent, Hostess Brands, was sought by the agency before the commercial was filmed, he added.
That was confirmed by Amy Clark, director for snack marketing at Hostess. “The humorous ad is a fun way of bringing together two iconic American brands – Chevy and Twinkies,” Ms. Clark said in an e-mail on Friday. “We were delighted to be part of it and we have enjoyed seeing the positive consumer response.”
According to a recap by Adweek.com and YouTube, “2012” finished sixth among 27 commercials from Super Bowl XLVI that have had more than a million views on YouTube. By Friday afternoon, the total number of views had reached almost 6.7 million.
To build interest in all three Chevy spots, G.M. began offering, weeks before Super Bowl Sunday, a free app that viewers could use during the game to take quizzes, interact with each other on Twitter and win prizes.
There were 725,000 downloads of the Chevy Game Time app, as it was called, Mr. Ewanick said. “At one point, there were 12 to 13 million page views in the app,” he added.
Chevrolet was not the only Super Bowl sponsor that sought to take advantage of the increasing interest among consumers in so-called second-screen experiences as they watch television.
Coca-Cola, which ran three spots during the game, offered a live stream on a Web site that featured the brand’s polar bear characters’ reactions to the Super Bowl, the halftime show and the ads. By the third quarter, Adage.com reported, more than 600,000 people were watching the Coca-Cola live stream.
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