Eighty Four’s Ross Farm included in ‘crowd-funded’ Super Bowl beer ad
Scott Manko, left, Drew Manko and Amy Manko are shown with a basket full of their yarn made on Ross Farm. Their farm will be part of a one-minute ad during the Super Bowl Sunday.
Amy Ross Manko is understandably delighted that her small business in Eighty Four that raises heritage and rare-breed sheep will get some very brief air time in a commercial during Sunday’s Super Bowl telecast.
While Manko isn’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, viewers will have to look faster than they can say “Leicester Longwools” to see the Ross Farm logo that appears near the end of a commercial for Newcastle Brown Ale. Her logo shares time and space with three dozen other advertisers, including national, regional and local companies in what is the Super Bowl’s first “crowd-funded” ad.
The lighthearted spot, its creators explain in a tongue-and-cheek news release, is a poke at the massive amounts of money spent by companies for the opportunity to make a 30- to 60-second impression on a national viewing audience of more than 100 million.
This year, a 30-second Super Bowl spot is tagged at $4.5 million, up $500,000 from the 2014 rate.
Manko said her son Drew saw a pitch from Newcastle Brown Ale in a YouTube commercial, in which “Parks and Recreation” star Aubrey Plaza, who is milking a cow, calls for brands to join Newcastle’s “Band of Brands” commercial in exchange for a small contribution.
“Instead of blowing Newcastle’s marketing budget, let’s team up to blow all of our marketing budgets, together! That’s called teamwork,” Plaza says in the video.
Manko said she reluctantly sent an email with a link to the Ross Farm’s website to Droga5, the New York agency that handles Newcastle Brown ads.
“I guess I didn’t really expect much,” said Manko, whose historic farm raises heritage and rare-breed sheep for wool that is spun into yarn by other small farms and sold on Ross Farms’ Etsy.com site and at national wool shows.
“I don’t think knitters and spinners are going to follow the big game” and decide to buy Ross Farms’ wool products, Manko said.
But getting even split-second exposure before millions of viewers Sunday can’t hurt, either, she acknowledged.
“The whole thing is sort of unbelievable that they would select a small family farm out in Southwestern Pennsylvania,” Manko said, adding that she closed her correspondence with the firm by stating, “I don’t expect to hear from you.”
She said she was contacted by Droga5 three days after she sent the email, inviting her to participate in the ad.
Nick Machmeyer, Droga5’s strategist for Newcastle Brown, said Wednesday the Ross Farm was chosen because the agency liked Manko’s attitude.
When asked what she paid for the privilege of having her company logo included in the ad, Ross declined, saying the amount was “nominal.”
“A lady never kisses and tells,” she said.
Droga5 produced the ad for the English brewer, whose ale is imported to the U.S. by Heineken USA. Newcastle Brown’s print, billboard and television ads take a humorous, if not iconoclastic, approach to its working-class brand, which was first brewed in 1927, and aimed at English workers.
Machmeyer said the spot for the big game continues Droga5’s “No Bollocks” ad platform, which pokes fun at the massive amounts of money spent on advertising, and with many brewers’ “very disingenuous” approach to selling beer, focusing their ads on packaging or lifestyle instead of the beer itself.
“It never feels like they’re selling it to you straight,” he said.
The agency’s work on the Newcastle Brown account has won praise from industry publication AdWeek and online news site BuzzFeed, which called the campaign “branding genius.”
Sunday’s ad depicts a couple toasting each other with bottles of Newcastle on their move to a new home, followed by a madcap visual and verbal romp through the three dozen other brands that participated in the crowd-funded commercial. The line-up includes some well-known brands like Match.com, Hunt’s Tomatoes, Jockey shorts, Armstrong Ceiling and Floors, Brawny paper towels and Quilted Northern tissues, which are either shown in the home or through their logos that fill the screen by the end of the commercial.
“They barely manage to get it done,” Machmeyer said of the actors’ fast-pitched pace.
Manko, who was formerly director of the Washington County Literacy Council, grew up on her family’s farm in Eighty Four. It is on the National Registry of Historic Places as the “Frank L. Ross Model Farm” and is noted for its agricultural architecture. Four years ago, she left the council to focus full time on raising the heritage and rare-breed sheep for their wool, in a flock that includes Leicester Longwools, Cotswolds, Romneys, Cheviots and Shetlands.
Since that time, Manko, 44, her son and husband Scott have found success, participating in the country’s largest juried wool festivals around the country.
As for whether Sunday’s placement in the beer ad will deliver a touchdown, Manko said it will be interesting to see the response, adding that she’s happy to participate in Newcastle Brown Ale’s iconoclastic approach.
“They’re sort of going rogue, I guess.”