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Though cryptocurrencies and the companies hawking them were all but unavoidable during the Super Bowl, only one commercial featured Larry David, the lovable, irritable, and idiosyncratic creator and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Appearing in FTX’s first-ever Super Bowl spot, the advertisement looks back on some of the greatest achievements of mankind—the wheel, the lightbulb, the first indoor toilet—with David there to offer kind words of discouragement, every step of the way.
Marketing Brew spoke with Andrew Hunter, creative director for Dentsu’s 360i agency, whose pitch inspired the spot.
The pitch: Many people are skeptical about cryptocurrencies. And who better to broach the subject than the king of skepticism and questioner of cultural niceties himself? Though the journey-through-history part was already pitched, the idea came to life when David and his team joined the production.
“The first thing we wrote was Larry emerging from the darkness to people inventing fire and just sort of going, ‘Eh, too hot,’” said Hunter.
Of course, the joke, in the end, is to not “be like Larry.”
Foisted: David brought on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld alumnus Jeff Schaffer to shoot the spot, bringing the Curb look to the Elizabethan era and beyond. And, as a bonus Easter egg, one of the security guards dragging Larry out of the Japanese board room is Yaz Takahashi, who played a sushi chef in Curb’s most recent season.
Timeline: The wheel was invented sometime before the 4th century BC, meaning Hunter and his team had more than 2,400 years to cover before getting to cryptocurrencies.
That meant the team had to figure out not only which invention to show in each era, but which iteration—The first indoor toilet or the first recognizable indoor toilet? Deciding whether to use a two-pronged fork or a three-pronged fork took about an hour.
“It’s the Super Bowl. People are there to watch the ads, but they're also getting up to get a beer,” said Hunter. “From the start, the writing and the jokes are as important as making something visually arresting.”
Source material: Obviously, there weren’t any cameras around to capture the signing of the Declaration of Independence. To capture the palette of the era, Hunter spent his time studying artists Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Vermeer.
Cutting room: The airplane, the car, jazz, and the first man to eat an oyster were all pitched but left out. Another nixed scene saw Larry screaming over the hum of the first vacuum cleaner.
To the moon: Though a reference to crypto meme slang, Larry’s stint at the NASA control room saw him bantering with an actress playing mathematician Katherine Johnson of Hidden Figures fame. It was “another cool way to celebrate extraordinary accomplishments in human-kind, even if Larry can’t see it,” said Hunter.