Unlikely stars emerge from Super Bowl ads
Alyssa Campanella plays a robot in a Kia ad who takes down a car-smudging guy. Campanella would love to have a Food Network show.(Photo: Kia)
Besides the endless hype, one thing, for sure, emerged from Sunday night's Super Bowl commercials: unlikely stars.
Such as the pudgy geek who locks lips with the Go Daddy supermodel.
Or the super-friendly, super-happy white dude who fast-talks Jamaican dialect for Volkswagen.
Or the sexy robot who beats the stuffing out of the guy who touches her Kia.
SEE ALL THE ADS: Those you missed, those you like [1]
AD METER: Budweiser's Clydesdale wins USA TODAY ad contest by a nose[2]
For each of these stars — mostly unknown nationally before Sunday night's game watched by 108.4 million viewers — life may be forever changed. And they know it.
Many of the non-celebrity actors and actresses who starred in Super Bowl spots share a common dream: individual fame beyond the moment of Super Bowl glory.
"Appearing in a successful Super Bowl spot can definitely get an unknown's career rolling," says Noreen Jenney Laffey, president of Celebrity Endorsement Network, which links celebrities with marketers. "The Budweiser Clydesdale spot[3] is getting tons of press — and that stars a horse."
Equine fame aside, several humans have rocketed from obscurity to stardom on the backs of successful Super Bowl spots.
After little-known model Farrah Fawcett starred with playboy quarterback Joe Namath in a Noxzema Super Bowl ad in 1973, she became a top model, a hot name in Hollywood and ultimately one of the stars of the hit TV series Charlie's Angels.
And after Cedric the Entertainer (Cedric Kyles) starred in a 2001 Anheuser-Busch Super Bowl spot in which the ill-timed explosion of a Bud Light bottle spoils his dream date, he got a huge career boost for TV and films.
Here's how three unknowns from Sunday's 47th Super Bowl hope to keep their stars shining:
• The geek. The chubby geek who seriously swaps tongues with supermodel Bar Refaeli, is still pinching himself. "It's everything I couldn't imagine when I signed up to be an actor," says Jesse Heiman, the 34-year-old character actor who plays the "romantic" lead in the Go Daddy kiss-o-rama. "It's crazy the things I get paid to do as an actor."
Consider: 18 seconds of the 30-second commercial are pure kiss.
Heiman actually was not even supposed to get the role. After a series of auditions, someone else was selected. But Bob Parsons, the founder of Go Daddy, wasn't sold on the guy who was cast.
So the auditions continued and Heiman, who is single and admits to never having had a serious girlfriend, was picked.
"It seemed a little too good to be true," he says, still giddy from his new-found fame despite previous appearances, mostly playing a nerd, in nearly 200 TV shows, films and commercials.
Sure, he says, he's kissed girls before — but never a supermodel, much less one who turned out to be a super kisser.
"She kissed amazingly soft and sweet," he says, with some embarrassment. "I'm going to hold all kissers to that standard — and it's going to be hard to beat."
But the commercial was hard work to film, he says. "It may sound dumb, but the day was exhausting," Heiman says. He says he lost exact count but that the kissing scene was reshot between 45 and 60 times.
"We started kissing in the morning," he says, "and continued after lunch." The scene took nearly six hours to shoot. "The director advised me at lunch not to eat anything with garlic."
He occasionally had to use mouthwash — and lip balm — between takes.
But it was worth it, he says. Even worth all the embarrassing auditions that he had to go through. One audition, in front of the casting crew, involved kissing a plastic, blow-up doll that, he says, was a Lindsay Lohan knockoff.
When he was called back for a second audition, he had to kiss an actual woman, Heiman says. "It's really weird to stand next to a stranger — and someone shouts, 'Action!' and you're suddenly kissing them."
SUPER BOWL ADS: The best of the past 24 years[6]
PHOTOS: USA TODAY Ad Meter winners[7]
The commercial, created by the New York office of the ad agency Deutsch, has taken mega-heat from critics[8] and was ranked last among the Super Bowl ads[9] in the rating of the spots by USA TODAY's 7,000-plus Ad Meter panel.
"Surely Go Daddy could have found a better way to deliver a message than two people slurping it up," says panelist Frank Slezak, a fashion photographer from Horsham, Pa. "What message did that give to our kids?"
Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving is unapologetic about the ad, which is supposed to illustrate the "sexy" and smart sides of the Web domain and website company. "We're not going to apologize for the kiss," says Irving. "Maybe America has a better sense of humor than you think."
The ad, on Monday, ranked as the most-buzzed-about Super Bowl ad on Twitter — albeit most of it negative. It got 4 million YouTube views before it even aired. And it's already generated more mobile sales and more new customers than the company has ever garnered from a Super Bowl spot, says spokeswoman Elizabeth Driscoll.
Heiman insists that no harm was done with this spot — and that it offers hope. "I don't think it's that bad," he says. "It's kind of nice to show that any guy out there can make his dreams come true, and kiss a supermodel."
Now he hopes that the ad will somehow lift him beyond the stereotypical nerd roles that he's played for so long.
"I am a nerd," he says. He says he dresses like a nerd. He loves playing computer games. And he loves watching Star Trek.
But he recently joined Weight Watchers and aspires to land work in a pilot for a TV series — "especially one with Robin Williams," he says.
And while he didn't get Refaeli's phone number, Heiman says, they did exchange Twitter handles.
Perhaps, most important, they didn't kiss goodbye after that extra-long day of work, he says. "We hugged."
• The "Jamaican" office worker. When Erik Nicolaisen was 7 years old, his cousin, a professional wind surfer, came back from a trip to Jamaica and brought him a tape of reggae music.
Nicolaisen says he had never heard anything like it and couldn't get enough.
Two years later, his father took him to a concert by reggae legend Jimmy Cliff. "That was it, man," says Nicolaisen. "I was hooked."
So, the native of Portland, Ore., who now lives in Los Angeles, started to mimic the Jamaican dialect. He got it down pat.
But the 33-year-old actor and voiceover specialist couldn't believe his ears when his agent contacted him about a casting call for a tall, white guy who can speak in Jamaican dialect.
Nicolaisen got the gig. At the time, he didn't know it was to be Volkswagen's Super Bowl commercial about a happy-go-lucky white guy who drives fellow office workers crazy with his upbeat outlook and Jamaican accent.
The ad, by the Los Angeles office of the ad agency Deutsch, took plenty of pre-game flak[10], primarily from critics contending it was racist. But Nicolaisen didn't understand the anger.
"I got hundreds of e-mails from Jamaicans telling me they support me," says Nicolaisen.
The critical furor mostly died down after Jamaica's minister of tourism told USA TODAY that he loved the spot — and was trying to ink a partnership with VW.
Nicolaisen, who is married and a father, says he hopes to land some substantial acting roles after this.
The VW gig, he says, must have been meant to be. And not only because of his unique accent, but also because of the car that he's driven since 1994: a VW Passat.
• The sexy robot. Alyssa Campanella was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
On just the second take of her Kia Super Bowl ad shoot — about a super-sexy robot model on an auto show display that's overly protective of a Kia Forte — she almost lost her shot at Super Bowl stardom.
In the ad, she appears to use martial arts to kick across the display a guy who kicks the tires on her car. Of course, it's all done with camera magic and stunt doubles.
But the former Miss USA got the wind knocked out of her when she accidentally stood in the very spot where a stunt double — standing in for the actor she supposedly attacks — landed hard.
"I felt pretty stupid after that. I was covered in bruises," says the 22-year-old native of Manalapan, N.J., who was Miss USA 2011 and who now dreams of having her own show on the Food Network.
The director called for a break, and a medic on the set checked her out. And quickly, they were back shooting the same, ultra-physical scene again — until 11 that evening.
More than 100 takes were shot of the very physical ad, by ad agency David & Goliath, and she was required to work several days with a stunt coordinator before the ad shoot.
Even then, a few of the kicking scenes went awry. "A few times my knee hit him in the face," she says. And she wore high heels "so he put on a shin guard."
She says her boyfriend, with whom she's lived for 2 1/2 years, has taken notice of her new assertiveness.
"He's never done anything to get on my bad side," she says. But if he does, she says with a laugh, she won't likely kick him across the room. "If he's bad, he goes to the guest room."
References
- ^ http://admeter.usatoday.com/ (admeter.usatoday.com)
- ^ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/02/04/clydesdale-ad-wins-by-a-nose/1889693/ (www.usatoday.com)
- ^ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/02/04/clydesdale-ad-wins-by-a-nose/1889693/ (www.usatoday.com)
- ^ Last Slide (rssfeeds.usatoday.com)
- ^ Next Slide (rssfeeds.usatoday.com)
- ^ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/01/26/admeter-countdown-pepsi-mcdonald-winner-super-bowl/1862001/ (www.usatoday.com)
- ^ http://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/money/business/2013/01/30/usa-today-ad-meter-winners/1878471/ (www.usatoday.com)
- ^ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/02/03/superbowl-social-media/1888545/ (www.usatoday.com)
- ^ http://admeter.usatoday.com/articles/view/the-results (admeter.usatoday.com)
- ^ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/01/29/volkswagen-super-bowl-commercial-racism/1874213/ (www.usatoday.com)