Super Bowl Radar: Steve Chavez

What’s the best Super Bowl pre-ad campaign you’ve seen recently?

This was in 2014 but I admired how the Anna Kendrick piece for Newcastle Brown Ale (below) put the Super Bowl playbook status quo on its ear. I’m drawn to the spunkiness of the approach, and the resourcefulness of making an impact without having to pay the tariff. That kind of stuff puts a smile on my face. So rebellious.

And your all-time favourite Super Bowl ad?

I have the cliché’ answer, but the back story might get me a hall pass. It’s Apple’s 1984 and here’s why. I was prepared to enter art school on a scholarship when my father re-located the family from the Midwest to California. I took the move as an excuse to throw my well-planned cards in the air, and headed west. For some time thereafter I “struggled with my priorities,” as my dad put it. (In my defense, I was a teenager living in Southern California for the first time.) After several years of living blissfully adrift, I discovered this weird, interesting world of advertising via a college handbook. Intrigued, one of the first things I read was all this hoopla around this computer commercial on the Super Bowl. I dug into the story of TBWA Chiat/Day, Apple, the bravado and brashness of it all and that was that. I was hooked.

What website(s) do you use most regularly and why?

My morning lap before the storm hits is usually a bookmarked finance site that lets me know I’ll be working until I’m 100, Petrolicious.com to feed my love of vintage cars and then a few sites that cover the ad business. Nothing too inspiring now that I read my answer. Very pragmatic.

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought and why?

I just got an Apple iPad Pro and equipped it with the fancy keyboard and the pencil. The pencil, which turns the iPad into a sketchpad, has been a revelation. Or better put, a welcomed regression. To have a sketchpad handy to doodle, fiddle with ideas, scratch out a storyboard frame, has been wonderful. I’ll admit, and maybe I’m dating myself here, that I spent some time in this business with a pad on my lap, trying to, for example, make a print headline work. Or I used it to let my brain run all willy-nilly. Now that it’s on a modern day tablet, it’s been pretty cool.

Facebook, Instagram or Twitter?

Because I’m currently living in the Midwest, away from family and friends, Facebook has become a very elaborate form of email. I have an Instagram account, I will say that. And I went through a Twitter phase, which has inexplicably faded. I do admire how much some people use and leverage these platforms.

What’s the most inspiring thing about the Super Bowl for you? And why?

Great work, lo and behold, works. Work that’s focused and clear, presented without compromise, can be powerful and effective, not irresponsible and self-absorbed. And, it’s a space that proves time and time again that there’s nothing wrong with expressing an emotion, from happy to heartfelt.

What’s the most significant change you’ve witnessed in the Super Bowl since you started watching it?

I’m of a generation where the Super Bowl, for the most part, has always been a big deal. But I think the money-raining-from-the-skies mid-to late-90s, mostly attached to the dot.com world, really kicked things into overdrive. From that point on, it’s been game on. Of course, now it’s a multi-platform assault, as clients do their best to get the most out of their investment.

If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry during the Super Bowl, what would it be?

I think we’ve gone a little too far with the “let the cat out of the bag” strategy. I wouldn’t mind getting back to a few more surprises on game day. Of course, we’re all chasing the VW Darth Vader (below) phenomena of several years ago. And this is not a knock against the spot because I loved the spot, but not everybody has a bazillion Star Wars fans to crank up that view count.

Tell us about one of your personal/professional Super Bowl experiences that most people won’t know…

My first Super Bowl spot was over twenty years ago, for a little known - and now no longer in existence - piece of computer hardware. The client’s financial liquidity was a touch-and-go situation from month to month, so it was all very messy on the financial side. In the end, the money appeared, the spot got done, and it ran, deep in the fourthquarter of a game long since over. Six months later, our client made the local news, being led away in handcuffs for stock fraud.