Sunday, May 1, 2022

DC ExtraTime: The Challenge Takes Over a Super Bowl Commercial

BY DC CUEVA                        
■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB/TK
   ESTIMATED READING TIME: 18 MINS.

In over a week from now, the focus for many fans of the MTV Reality world will be fixated on the first offering in 2022 of the fifth major pro sport of The Challenge. But once matters settled on Season 2 of All-Stars back in January, this blogger who loves his MTV shows took a break from covering them on here to follow another of his biggest passions: sports - and the two biggest events of them all... and it's one of the reasons why I've not been posting as much on this DCBLOG site in these first five months.

February gave me reason to join everyone else in the sports world and be both a fan and a viewer in enjoying the nineteen days of the Winter Olympics... and if you saw my Twitter feed during that eventful fortnight in Beijing, then you know how much of an Olympic super fanatic I am as I do any MTV show. But along with seeing Champs vs. Pros competitors Lindsay Jacobellis, Gus Kenworthy and Louie Vito, as well as Chloe Kim, Shaun White and Team USA, one other thing took place in the sports universe in the middle of the Games in a past and future host city an ocean away.

A year ago, the National Football League chose to take advantage of the massive popularity of America's favorite sport by adding a seventeenth regular season game to its schedule. As a result, the 2021 NFL campaign was expanded by one week to eighteen weeks of regular season play, a three-week preseason beforehand, and a thirteen-act play in January & February that was perhaps the most dramatic series of playoff games in league history. It also pushed back the season's last game, Super Bowl LVI, by a week to Sunday. February 13th -- the middle Sunday of the XXIV Winter Olympiad... and it made for what the network of both those events, NBC, to call it a "Once in a Lifetime" Super Gold Sunday.

And while we were caught up in the Los Angeles Rams' dramatic championship win as they nipped the Cincinnati Bengals by a late touchdown in their spectacular home of SoFi Stadium — plus hip-hop's finest hour in its biggest stars headlining a legendary halftime show and before the postgame bombshell of the ladies figure skating fiasco, there was an appearance by one who once appeared on a few seasons of The Challenge and got her start as part of a renowned Real World class. That person also just so happens to most notably be the ex-girlfriend of one of the All-Star competitors competing next month, as she took part in of the most unique aspects to every Super Sunday.

Pic: Ben Liebenberg/NFL
For almost as long as it's been played, the Super Bowl has been the perfect amalgamation of everything America has to offer: the equation of the championship game of its biggest sports league, plus an entertainment spectacle and pop culture extravaganza wrapped around it, equals the year's biggest television audience with well over 100+ million tuning in at home and in pubs on a Sunday in early February. It's no surprise that given the lead-up to that big day in the winter, week in & week out NFL games are TV's most-watched programs in this digital age... so much so, the league just signed a new record-shattering TV deal in the billions that will see Amazon Prime join NBC, CBS, FOX and ESPN in the elite alphabet soup of covering pro football.
   It's the NFL's massive appeal — both during the fall and even in the offseason as the NFL Draft took place this weekend in Las Vegas — that has always long attracted Madison Avenue. Elizabeth Lindsey of corporate strategist Wasserman calls this facet of American life, "...the last bastion of programming that people feel is must-see, in the moment, live," and sees the Super Bowl as "...a cultural experience far more than it is an individual game: it's a gathering. And regardless of how you watch, at the end of the day, it's social." And it is with America's biggest unofficial national holiday that is, by a mile, the single biggest and most coveted advertising platform that's offered in this country... and even a generation used to watching shows commercial-free still pause for these half- to minute-long must-see moments.
   Apple's bold move to create a 2-minute mini-movie depicting the movie 1984 to reveal its Macintosh PC four decades ago signaled its arrival, and turned a commercial in the big game into much more than just simply promoting your product in front of so many millions. Just about every company — Fortune 500 companies to 2000's dot-com busts — does it big time when it comes to shelling out millions of dollars to land a spot during the game: from movie-style production values to star power. Just about every big name celebrity from Betty and Britney to Cardi B. and Michael Jordan have appeared in many of the most memorable Super Bowl ads of years gone by, often which have humor as the order of the day... as has that squad of Clydesdale horses who represent regular advertisers Budweiser.

Last year's set of big game commercials reflected the mood of an America scarred by the year from hell, and still coming to grips with the siege in D.C. a month before Tom Brady beat Patrick Mahomes for his seventh title ring. But Super Bowl LVI saw a slight change in tone for advertisers from being optimistic to something more familiar: the hilarious and lighthearted spirit of previous years. Recent spots over the last several Super Bowls saw Lil' Nas X cap his rise to music's elite in a Doritos ad two years ago, while last year saw Wayne's World duo of Dana Carvey & Mike Myers reunite once again for Uber Eats.
   The class of 2022 Super Bowl commercials saw celebrities aplenty: Ken Jeong & Joel McHale getting together for some Planters, one who got bossed by an All-Star in Lindsay Lohan working out at Planet Fitness, John Legend singing in Headspace's SB debut, and Megan Thee Stallion and Charlie Puth hooking up in the wild for Flamin' Hot Cheetos. And there's more stars: Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus, Kevin Hart, Lizzo, Zendaya, Jim Carrey, DJ Khaled, Gweneth Paltrow, Trevor Noah, Pete Davidson, Kenny G, Colin Jost, Scarlett Johansson, Doja Cat, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and a pre-slap Will Smith. There was even the return of the beloved E*Trade baby, Boston Dynamics' superstar robotic dog... and the one and only Dr. Evil.
   This year's game also marked part of the breakout party for legalized sports betting in the Manning brothers plugging Caesars Sportsbook, cryptocurrency -- which stood out in Coinbase treating its minute of glory with a QR code in the style of a DVD screensaver, and streaming services who also fight it out with NBC's own Peacock. And the asking price that 30 Rock sent out to those wanting a ticket to the big party in L.A.: a record $7 million fee for a 30-second spot. Even amidst all of that, there was one ad that stood out to a certain section of the massive audience that had just begun its relatively short offseason compared to its football counterparts.... and it's not one of Snoop Dogg's favorite activities.

The magic day of 4/20 saw many Americans finally get a chance to go out and blow one out for the annual national holiday of marijuana, but it also marked two notable developments. In the early hours, Paramount+ debuted the season premiere of the third season of MTV's The Real World Homecoming, which sees the cast of Season 9 in New Orleans reunite in the Big Easy and has already brought back plenty of memories including THAT song. And at high noon Eastern time the same day, the prelude began in earnest for Season 3 of The Challenge: All-Stars... and where the attention now turns from us having welcomed back many of our favorites to a season of a totally different kind.
   This third installment will up the ante on qualification requirement of getting into the field by putting a stipulation that this season's players have at least one appearance in the climactic stage of any season in the final challenge in order to take on the huge task of competing down in Panama. Thus, this spring's field will be loaded with those who all generations of Challenge fans are familiar with — from old timers from back in the day who've been on the first two seasons of this much-heralded spinoff series, to a few who we at this site have followed their entire MTV career dating back to when DCBLOG began covering this show back in 2013 — and in this blogger's case, when yours truly signed on a Twitter account for the first time ten years ago this summer so he can follow this MTV world.
Real World Pics Courtesy MTV
   One of the big heavy hitters in this spring's class takes on the role of being one of the few to compete on both the regular show and this latest spinoff that's made for the streaming crowd in Paramount+ is Wes Bergmann, who has been on fourteen regular seasons of the show along with the entire Champs vs. Stars trilogy. He may not possess as many championship rings on his fingers as do those who he's been competing with on these shows, but Kansas City's favorite ginger man has forged his deserved reputation as the mastermind of Challenge politics over the years — from getting rookies to align with him to trying what he can to rattle a 7-time champ, even in a Czech wartime bunker.
   It might seem so long ago now, but it's hard to think that a then 19-year Wes first took his first MTV baby steps during a legendary season of The Real World that made its mark in many ways. A college frat kid years away from achieving Challenge legend status came to Austin in 2005 with so much more hair adorning his head that you could possibly laugh at how he once sported a mullet after having a mohawk in his casting tape back then. But it was in the Texas state capital that he fell in love with a Peruvian.

Johanna Botta spent her childhood in Peru's largest city of Lima and did not move to the U.S. until she turned 11 years old. The rest of her MTV bio wrote of her, "A stunning and fiery Peruvian living in Southern California, Johanna knows that the combination of her looks and intellect can get her just about anything she wants. She is highly motivated and is working toward becoming a clinical therapist, specializing in marriage and family counseling. She balances these characteristics with her modest background. Even with English as her second language, she has mastered it enough to use it as a tool to be highly opinionated and argumentative."
   Once she met up with the rest of the seven strangers to begin Season 16 in the Lone Star State, Jo almost instantly developed a crush on Wes but who actually kissed Danny in the club... and she would further complicate things with him when they got friendly with fellow locals. There was even a night on the town where a drunken incident of her stealing a rose from a homeless man left Jo spending a night in a local jail... but in the end she and Wes got back together, and not long after they flew out of Texas, they became official and all directions pointed towards the two being each other's perfect matches.
   Jo & Wes even got THIS close to being together forever: he proposed to her before they made their debuts on Fresh Meat I. But it was she went onto The Gauntlet III and won in that Big Easy final that we found out that #JES was dunzo. It was when she came to South America that the saga of another facet of her ex's Challenge backstory would begin: a smooch with Kenny Santucci on The Island lit the first on his epic rivalry with Mr. Beautiful... one that would continue when she went onto The Ruins and continued long after she was done with these shows.
   It might be hard to think, but there is one other thing that links Johanna to another of Wes' arch enemies: for a time, she once hosted the show that has been the domain of one Johnny Bananas in NBC's 1st Look... but it when she reappeared on the Peacock network for a brief time the day before Valentine's Day this winter that brings us all the way back to the present.

AP/Rex Features/Shutterstock
The pandemic brought about a boost to the hundreds of ecommerce sites whose traffic and exposure boomed when the doors to our hometown malls were temporarily shut... and it's not just companies like Amazon & boss man Jeff Bezos who got even richer. This year marks the 25th birthday for Japanese-based Rakuten, whose business-to-many model has made it one of the world's biggest ecommerce sites, and where the so-called "Amazon of Japan" entered the U.S. market when they bought Buy.com and later adorned their logo on the jerseys of the Golden State Warriors and FC Barcelona -- and thus on the likes of Stephen Curry, Lionel Messi and Neymar.
   After shuttering the former Buy.com as the business world was evolving, Rakuten decided their next big splash in gaining greater exposure on our shores would be to plug another one of their acquisitions. In 2014, they forked over $1 billion to buy 15-year-old Bay Area-based cash-back & rewards app Ebates, and five years later they renamed it Rakuten Rewards -- the R name meaning "optimism" translated in Japanese. And when they thought about wanting to go to the next level and advertise on the Super Bowl, they had one person in mind of being the star of their 30 seconds of fame.
Jordan Strauss/AP
   By now, everyone in TV land has heard of Ted Lasso: an American football coach recruited by an English league side in Britain's own brand of football -- soccer to us here, and where Jason Sudeikis' alter ego which launched NBC's Premier League coverage ten years ago would ultimately become the darling of the streaming verse in winning a boatload of awards & acclaim at Apple+. One of those who has to deal with the dealings with manager Lasso and those occasional homemade biscuits as the owner of AFC Richmond is Rebecca Welton, portrayed by Hannah Waddingham... who went straight from being Septa Unella on Game of Thrones to having a Best Supporting Comedy Actress Emmy and two Critics Choice Awards sitting above her fireplace, something she never expected when she was cast in that role.

Traditionally, companies that advertise on the Super Bowl wait until that Sunday to reveal their ads for the first time to the entire public for the sake of giving everyone who watches that element of surprise. But the advent of the internet has seen some companies decide that the temptation is irresistible and opt to show their big game ads earlier. And in the case of a company having their eyes on increasing their footprint in the U.S. and make it a household name here, Rakuten chose to leak their commercial (which was conceived & produced entirely in-house rather than through the assistance of an ad agency) a week early on The Today Show... one which generated much needed publicity within the American press.
Rakuten
   When the Rams and Bengals emerged out of a 14-team pack that began this winter's playoffs, two worthy teams that pitted a team of stars versus a second year QB & his title-hungry city that both survived a month of dramatic finishes, overtime games and walk-off field goals finally went heads-up in the 80-degree Southern California heat despite it being played indoors in SoFi. It's in that theme that Rakuten's Super Bowl commercial took on a similar setting, where Hannah found herself playing a game of high-roller, high-stakes poker against someone who also used the Rakuten app. In addition to playing with a deck of cards, stacks of poker chips and some money in hand, the players at that felt table also felt the need to go all-in -- a philosophy that's already seen its 15 million members earn $3.5 billion "cash back" by shopping via its platform.


And one of those who joined Ted Lasso's boss for poker night happens to be Johanna, who also happens to now call Great Britain her home now in a post-MTV life that has her presenting on television and the internet across the pond. She was casted into Rakuten's Super Bowl commercial with the AFC Richmond owner, and it instantly garnered the attention of Challenge Nation on Super Bowl Sunday including one of Jo's Austin roomies...









And on Instagram afterwards, Jo gave her followers a brief glimpse behind the scenes at what went on in creating this Rakuten commercial, where there is more to putting on a big projects like this which may last only 30 seconds to a minute, but where it still takes the same commitment as a music video, TV show or any other visual project to perfect for everyone watching at home.





Super Bowl Sunday: even in this age with a gazillion choices to choose from in this age of broadcast, cable and streaming in television nowadays, it's still that one day every year where the entire nation is all glued to the same one event. When counting the initial measurement of those watching at home, on streaming outlets, and further research done afterwards of both out-of-home & group viewing by the industry's arbiter of the numbers game of TV ratings data in Nielsen, more than 208 million viewers tuned to Super Bowl LVI. That equates to two-thirds of the U.S. population, almost exactly the same number as the total viewership of the last U.S. Summer Olympics of Atlanta 1996, and the most-watched show in the past few years... and the total viewing share was almost 90% -- also a big game record.
   Sure, the MTV Challenge might be referred to as "America's fifth major pro sport" by many of you reading this over NASCAR, soccer, UFC and everything else... but for one day at least, the show you love also got to do something that's been dreamt of a bit: taking over a Super Bowl commercial, all featuring a member of a beloved Real World cast that was named favorite season on the occasion of its twentieth season and before its most revered member (and her ex) takes center stage on All-Stars. Not a bad Super Sunday, right?


🏈     📺     💸

Next week, DCBLOG will commence our coverage of Season 3 of The Challenge: All-Stars featuring Wes and 23 twenty-three other competitors both familiar and fresh, and who've competed in a final before. We'll begin as always with our customary preseason preview with all the usual necessities to help get you set for its highly-anticipated premiere on Paramount+ on May 11th, followed by our traditional weekly coverage on here every weekend as we'll be taking the 'Pulse of every episode as seen by the cast on social media and much more... plus this unique facet to how we cover this show and this world.
   ExtraTime provides original storytelling like this on TV's most-exciting reality programming and its people, shows, moments and the world around us from this vantage point... and a lot of those who we'll be seeing on AS3 have been featured in this series. If you like what you've read, bookmark this site and like, comment & share our content on your social media channels, subscribe to this site's email list and notifications on your favorite apps whenever we post new content, and include the hashtag #DCBLOG to @DC408Dxtr. And we appreciate you for your continued support, and look forward to joining you all this spring and summer long for all the buzz from Challenge Nation.

- I AM DC
#DCBLOG

UPDATE: 7/25/22 - put in new video of Rakuten commercial after it was removed by the company's YouTube channel, and added athlete references
Posted by at
Labels: , , ,