REDDIT | Superb Owl | 2020
They hacked the Super Bowl in just 5 seconds / Reddit "Superb Owl"
For five seconds, text just appears on screen. You can't read it. But that was the most talked-about ad at the 2021 Super Bowl. Reddit's own line, "Wow, this actually worked," turned out to be exactly right.
The problem
Just before this, individual investors on r/WallStreetBets had shaken up Wall Street with GameStop stock, and Reddit's name was all over the news. A standard 30-second Super Bowl spot cost $5.5 million. Reddit didn't have that kind of budget.
The insight
Reddit users hate ads. So there was really only one option: do something that didn't feel like an ad. R/GA's answer was simple—if you can't say everything in 5 seconds, then just put it out there unfinished. Something you can't fully read makes people pause it, rewind it, search for it.
The idea
After a glitchy "Please stand by" screen, white text on a red background flashes by for exactly five seconds—a wall of text deliberately too dense to read in time. Tucked inside it was a mention of "r/superbowl," a community for owl lovers, which is where the title "Superb Owl" comes from. From greenlight to delivery took one week, and it aired only in 9 cities—a remarkably frugal approach all around.
What happened
On the day of the Super Bowl, it became the most-searched ad on Google, and it won the Grand Prix in the Social & Influencer category at the 2021 Cannes Lions.
Afterthought
I love the idea of winning by *not* showing something, instead of showing it. A tiny budget, a short production time, and yet it stole the spotlight from everyone else. It managed to capture, in the ad itself, the same spirit of the community that had just shaken the world with GameStop. An ad that ad-haters loved, made in just five seconds—that's a piece of work I won't forget.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2020
Featured in
- Putting 'We're Broke' Right at the Center of the IdeaSix ads that turned a shortfall into the raw material itself
