

Submarine ads don’t run just anywhere. Connecticut ad agency Mintz + Hoke created a campaign to support sub maker Electric Boat’s recruitment efforts specific to trades and engineering positions available in both the Groton, Conn. and Quonset Point, R.I. locations. The campaign is targeted at the 18-34-year-old audience segment looking to build a long-lasting career. The ad will air just before kickoff in the Hartford and Providence markets.Electric Boat | Recruitment | Super Bowl 2023 Regional
Providence-based agency Nail Communications produced the health care spot for health system Lifespan that will air throughout Rhode Island during the game. The spot states that nobody knows what the future holds for our health. By showing the myriad doors of the specialties that Lifespan has, the ad sends the reassuring message that whatever may come, Lifespan is prepared to help.
By Kyle O’Brien on Feb. 8, 2023 – 8:15 AM
-Nail Communications partnered with The Preservation Society of Newport County in Rhode Island to promote the famed Newport Mansions. The dramatic lives of the wealthy families who resided in them gets a movie trailer for a film that doesn’t exist. Dubbed “Live the Drama, the unconventional marketing approach was proposed by Nail to engage new audiences with the properties. For The Breakers, the grandest of the Newport Mansions, that meant introducing the inimitable Vanderbilts through a trailer, billboards, landing page—all the trappings of movie marketing. Filmed entirely on the grounds of The Breakers, the campaign trailer alludes to several historic storylines that affected the course of the Vanderbilt legacy.
If you make food for pets, you should also make commercials that appeal to them.
That’s the strategy behind a brand refresh campaign for Natural Balance Pet Foods.
Naturally, that type of marketing approach would require conducting focus groups with cats and dogs—which is what the NAIL Communications agency did in collaboration with animal behavioral experts.
“We were rather new to the category,” creative partner Alec Beckett tells Marketing Daily.
“What surprised us is how much dog food had changed over the last decade or so. But dogs have not changed, so why has dog food changed?”
The answer is that with the entry of D2C pet brands and other trends, the category has become a battleground of sorts—with product attributes more in line with what pet owners consume.
“They’re non-GMO, they’re gluten free, they’re kosher, they’re raw. All of those terms are human food trends and they were mirroring them in pet food,” Beckett says of competing brands.
“That struck us as being in opposition to a brand like Natural Balance, which for 30 years has been following veterinarian nutrition science. They adapt when the science changes, but they’re not chasing trends.”
The agency brought dog and cat owners and their pets to focus groups to gauge which types of video images and sounds most caught the animals’ attention.
“The way we hope it works is that the pet owners are the secondary audience. When an ad shows up on connected TV and their dog suddenly perks up and walks up to the TV—and maybe barks at it—that is the brand proving that it’s putting animals first,” says Beckett.
This spot explains that it’s “for your dog” while an on-screen QR code “is for you.” The QR code takes viewers to the MadeForPetsNotPeople landing page where a behind-the-scenes campaign video resides.
The dog spot starts with the sounds of a squeaky toy, and then a hand is shown throwing a ball up and down. There are also many shots of dogs playing, because “it’s been shown that dogs like watching other dogs on television,” as an animal behavior professor says on the behind-the-scenes video.
One platform chosen for the campaign is Hulu. “We wanted some living room entertainment where the dog or cat are more likely to ambiently be exposed to it in a way we hope will surprise and delight the pet owner,” says Beckett.
And because many people turn to their “second screen” on a smart phone or tablet once commercials appear on the big screen, “Our hope is that the pets pull you off the second screen. You look up and see the ad is for your pet and the QR code is for you.”
The J.M. Smucker Co. acquired Natural Balance in 2015 and sold it in early 2021 to Nexus Capital Management.
New QB, same Joe
Has Joe Berkeley become the go-to guy for ads involving Patriots quarterbacks?
Sure looks that way. Berkeley teamed up with David Gardiner — both of them former Hill Holliday executives, before leaving to go out on their own more than eight years ago — to design the Shields Health Care Group ad featuring Tom Brady a few years back. (Movie director Bobby Farrelly actually directed the spot.)
Now, Berkeley is playing a key role behind another set of football-themed ads, this time featuring current Patriots QB Mac Jones, on behalf of Quincy’s Arbella Insurance.
The ads, which Berkeley created with Tim Foley, have been running throughout the football season. (Berkeley directed the spots, while Foley was the art director and production designer.) One features Jones moving into his new home, only to find out that the moving company accidentally swapped his stuff with an old lady’s belongings. Jones inspects random tchotchkes, fiddles with a rabbit-ears antenna to watch a game, and chills out on a pink sofa, while asking where his stuff went. “Being a rookie homeowner is full of surprises,” the narrator intones. “Insuring your first home with Arbella isn’t.”
Berkeley said Jones and Brady were both naturals in front of the camera.
“Anytime you work with a pro athlete,” Berkeley said, “if you can explain this is a game, what the rules of the game are, and how much time is on the clock, you will have good results.”