Häagen-Dazs slows down in Fast & Furious SB ad spot - Brand Innovators

Häagen-Dazs slows down in Fast & Furious SB ad spot

  • Häagen-Dazs is advertising at the Super Bowl for the first time ever and the brand has just dropped its spot.
  • The creative, which comes after a recent rebrand, slows down the Fast & Furious franchise to enjoy some ice cream on a coastal drive. Dominic “Dom” Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) embrace the moment to eat Häagen-Dazs, while Tej Parker (Ludacris) speeds by.
  • The spot, created in collaboration with nice&frank, will run during the third quarter of the game. 

The campaign was created by a majority female team both on the marketing team, the agency side, as well as on set and in post production. Brand Innovators chatted with Rachel Jaiven, head of marketing at Häagen-Dazs and Tamera Geddes, Partner & President of nice&frank, about the campaign.

Brand Innovators: Why did Häagen-Dazs decide to run a Super Bowl ad?

Rachel Javen (RJ): The Super Bowl is one of the biggest snacking occasions in the United States and it’s an incredible time to be able to connect with consumers with a brand message. It is the year’s most watched stage and everyone loves to tune in to watch the ads. You have a captive audience and it’s exciting to be able to reach your consumers that way. 

For us, it felt right this year to participate and do our first Super Bowl because we are the No. 1 e leader in ice cream in terms of sales in the United States. And 25% of households have Häagen-Dazs in their freezer. Given the scale that our brand has, the great incredible growth momentum we have, we felt it was the right time. We also know how much our consumers love watching sports and, of course, snacking so it felt like the right time for us to showcase the brand. We’re really thrilled to be able to tell our brand story to a huge audience and hopefully prepare and they’ll get some Häagen-Dazs in their freezer ahead of the game.

BI: You released a couple of teasers before the ad. Can you talk about this release strategy?

RJ: We want to make sure we just move excitement, some intrigue and consumer interest about what Häagen-Dazs is doing with the teaser plan?

Our approach is similar to a film release where we have two teasers that are intended to be like a film release in a film trailer seeking some information. You’re wondering what’s going on. You cover the engines on and the highs and yes, it brings this curiosity of like what’s going on and ultimately, you know, a question of who’s going to be taking that side of Häagen-Dazs in the actual ad.

Tamera Geddes (TG): Häagen-Dazs came to us with this idea of taking time to slow down and in the midst of this chaotic world that we’re living in, creating moments of pause. The Super Bowl was the perfect opportunity to take a really intense, high stakes atmosphere and really slow it down and create a moment of pause in the actual game itself. That’s what people will see when they watch the spot.

The Super Bowl used to be about that one :30 or :60 second, but now it’s all about the weeks leading up to that moment and the surrounding world in which you create. The irony of the Super Bowl being the biggest stage for advertising is also the most crowded and complicated to break through. So because you’re battling, large crowds and people talking and bathroom breaks and food and alcohol, it was all the more reason we felt we needed to create intrigue early on with our teasers and then capture attention in those first few seconds of the spot. 

How did you come up with this idea to feature the Fast & Furious franchise based on the brief?

RJ: Our idea for this campaign because we had a very clear brief and then we had an amazing creative idea from the nice&frank team. It really came from this idea about what makes Häagen-Dazs unique in the category, which is all about a smooth creamy texture. It really requires you to slow down a moment. You can’t binge this product. You really have to savor it. 

That is a unique experience for Häagen-Dazs. It was really important to get that idea across very clearly. At the Super Bowl, we are launching a campaign to talk about how important it is to slow down, enjoy and make time to have good things in our lives. The ad really brings it to life in an incredible way to make sure that consumers understood what Häagen-Dazs stands for. 

BI: What makes a good Super Bowl ad?

RJ: A really good Super Bowl ad has the magic of a familiar face or character or actors, people that are culturally really well known. It is something that’s culturally relevant. People love the Fast and Furious franchise and have a lot of familiarity with the characters and what it represents. Being able to tell a story with a franchise in a very unique way and flipping that is something that certainly will help stand out on that platform. It speaks to people. 

The other piece that’s really important, of course, for me as a brand person, you have just 30 seconds to tell your brand story. And a really good Super Bowl ad does a great job telling that story very clearly. It has to be simple, it has to be clear. Otherwise, consumers are left with a like, what? I don’t really get it. What is Haagen-Dazs trying to tell me? Or what is that brand trying to tell me? And so a very good and effective Super Bowl ad does that very well with the magic of those characters, having some fun with the culture of cultural relevancy and more. 

TG: Notoriously, the Super Bowl is a humorous stage and so figuring out the way that humor came to life in a way that was unique to Häagen-Dazs and right for the brand tone was something. It’s more of like a wink than an LOL kind of moment. 

It’s also about the world beyond the Super Bowl. If we were to just take that time and focus all of our energy on the one spot, we would be doing ourselves a disservice. So we built out activations. We have an incredible drive activation that’s taking place in LA and driving across the country to New Orleans, where the Super Bowl will be held. We’re giving consumers more opportunities to engage with the brand and really understand our point of view about flow.

How will the campaign resonate beyond game day?

RJ: From a business standpoint, we are partnering with retailers, getting them excited and having activities so that people will have Hagen-Dazs in their freezer for the big game. After the big game, we’ll continue to support the storytelling around the Hagen-Dazs brand and across more channels, so continuing with our digital and streaming and whatnot.

We also are really excited because we have surrounded some of the music that is going to be featured around the Super Bowl. We’re sponsoring music videos on Vevo, the weekend leading up to the Super Bowl and we’re going to be doing some Spotify halftime sponsorship of the playlist. We are continuing to put Hagen-Dazs in front of consumers with relevancy with what they may be seeing on the Super Bowl stage.

The concept being very much about the Fast & Furious franchise. We’ve also put placements of our ad around the Fast & Furious categories on Peacock, so people are seeing our ad associated with the great franchise that we partnered with.