Vin’s Pick: “Terry Tate: Office Linebacker”

The cost for a 30-second spot during the 2003 Super Bowl was approximately $2.2 million. Reebok apparently liked that price so much, they decided to double-up and run a 60 second spot.

Oh, and the ad they ran? It didn’t feature a single Reebok product. In fact, the Reebok brand name was only mentioned twice throughout in the entire ad.

Sounds like a nice recipe for blowing an advertising budget, right? Au contraire!

After airing just once during the Super Bowl, Reebok’s “Terry Tate: Office Linebacker” ad generated monster buzz among their target demographic (males, aged 18-34) and created a 300+ percent traffic increase to Reebok.com — primarily from users looking to see more of the ad’s title character: “Terrible” Terry Tate.

ORIGINAL SUPERBOWL COMMERCIAL:

In total, the Super Bowl spot is credited with prompting over 7 million downloads from Reebok’s website.

Even more impressive is that these viral “webisode” videos took off in the days before video sharing sites such as Youtube and Vimeo.

WEBISODE #1:

FUN FACT: Writer/Executive Producer/Director Rawson Marshall Thurber capitalized on the success of Terry Tate, going on to write and direct the cult classic Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.