See adland’s favorite Super Bowl campaign: Tubi takes us down the rabbit hole

On Sunday, the Fox Corporation-owned streaming service made its Big Game debut with three spots.

The overarching goal of its first-ever Super Bowl campaign was to give the brand a personality, as opposed to leaning into its selection of movies and shows. “The streaming platform category is littered with title-first marketing,” says Kevin Mulroy, executive creative director and partner at Mischief.

“There’s a lot of focus on the next shiny movie or show drop. Tubi’s not about a specific title - it’s about exploring deep interest-based content with an unparalleled library. In a move to stand out, Tubi opted for a brand-first approach and revealed its personality to the world. This was a massive coming-out party for a killer product in a way that people, quite literally, could not ignore.”

Tubi’s Super Bowl spots were geared towards positioning the brand as mischievous and fun, a rebel within its industry. They were created, fittingly enough, by Mischief @ No Fixed Address, Tubi’s agency of record.

Two of the spots – titled ‘Rabbit Holes’ and ‘Gardener’ – revolve around a mildly horrifying, towering, bipedal rabbit, who emotionlessly wanders around a community and snatches unsuspecting human victims, carrying or dragging them into a giant pit. Sounds like the plot of a horror film, until we see the faces of the kidnapped as they glide gently and ever-deeper into the rabbit holes, their faces shining with glee as they look around them and see arrays of floating screens, an allegorical and visual representation of Tubi’s personalized streaming services. One of the ads closes with the copy: “Find rabbit holes you didn’t know you were looking for.”

The two ads with the giant, abducting rabbit were notable enough for the fact that they weren’t teased before the Super Bowl, and also for their conspicuous lack of celebrity spokespeople. But it was Tubi’s third ad that really ran against the grain of marketing norms.

That third ad, titled ‘Interface Interruption,’ was exactly that – a momentary hijacking of viewers’ screens. The ad opens with what appears to be a return to the normal broadcast of Super Bowl LVII, complete with cameos from NFL commentators Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen.

As they start discussing the status of the game, a simulation of a user interface pops up at the bottom of the screen, and an invisible user toggles away from the Fox Sports icon, toward that for Tubi. (It was at this point that millions of football fans must’ve shifted on their couches to make sure they weren’t sitting on the remote.) We then get a short, firsthand glimpse of a Tubi homepage – no music or frills, just a very simple demonstration lasting only a few seconds.

Tubi’s three-part Super Bowl LVII campaign was among the favorites selected by The Drum’s panel of experts.

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