Electronics retail company Best Buy decided to forgo the regular celebrity spokesperson for its annual Super Bowl commercial in favor of highlighting mobile technology innovators.
During this year’s Super Bowl game, the company aired a 30-second commercial titled “Phone Innovators. The commercial featured a handful of heavy hitters, including camera phone inventor Philippe Kahn, text-to-speech inventor Ray Kurzweil, SMS message innovator Neil Papworth, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, Square founder Jim McKelvey, and Shazam creators Chris Barton and Avery Wang.
However, the big highlight of the commercial was definitely the appearance of Words With Friends game creators Paul and David Bettner. A flight attendant hushes the two men during their introduction — poking fun at 30 Rock actor Alec Baldwin, who was removed from a plane months ago after refusing to turn off his phone while playing a rousing game of Words With Friends.
Best Buy said it decided to swap out its regular celebrity endorsement for this year’s commercial after noticing the outpouring admiration from people after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ death in October. Best Buy Marketing chief Drew Panayiotou previously told Reuters that “Silicon Valley inventors are today’s stars.”
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We’ve taken the liberty of embedding both the 30-second Best Buy Super Bowl commercial (as well as the extended cut) below.
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