Bob CollinsParticularly since they’re usually released in advance now, it’s getting harder for Super Bowl commercials to stand out from the crowd anymore.
A sure-fire way to get noticed, however, is not to get your ad on the TV at all.
84 Lumber, a Pennsylvania building supply firm, apparently ran afoul of Fox Sports’ policy of not allowing ads to embrace controversial political views during the game.
So it altered the ad it had planned to run, reportedly removing what appeared to be workers constructing a large structure, perhaps a border wall.
“I still can’t even understand why it was censored,” Maggie Hardy Magerko, 84 Lumber’s president and owner, tells the New York Times. “In fact, I’m flabbergasted by that in today’s day and age. It’s not pornographic, it’s not immoral, it’s not racist.”
The revised ad (above) will air before halftime, and the conclusion — maybe featuring a wall; maybe not — will be available on the company’s website at halftime.
The original plan for the ad showed the mother and daughter reaching the wall and, apparently, losing hope until, the Times says, “a patriotic symbol inspired them to find a massive doorway — which is what the workers were creating all along. The final line: ‘The will to succeed will always be welcome here.’”
The company president says she’s not using a strategy to get more attention for the ad by getting into a pre-game controversy over it.
“I’m sure I’m going to have economists and all these people say she’s an idiot, and maybe I am,” she tells the Times. “But I’m an idiot that has some money now that my people made for me, and I owe it to them to say that they’re great and I need more people like them.”
