NFL legends star in Israeli company Wix.com’s first Super Bowl spot
By JERUSALEM POST SPORTS STAFFRetired NFL star Terrell Owens in a Wix.com commercial(photo credit: Courtesy)
There must be an unwritten rule that every Super Bowl has to have at least one ad loaded with a roster of retired NFL heroes.Like ads with dogs, babies or movie stars, it’s a Super Bowl advertising formula that repeats year after year. This year will be no exception as first-time Super Bowl advertiser Wix.com – an Israel-based company – has created a 30-second Super Bowl spot fielding five – count ’em, five – former NFL greats.The lineup: Green Bay Packers legend Brett Favre; six-time Pro Bowl receiver Terrell Owens; Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith, 11-time Pro-Bowl guard Larry Allen and Pittsburgh Steelers running back Franco Harris.But the ad isn’t about football. Rather – based on the campaign slogal #ItsThatEasy – the spot depicts the path of the retired legends going from NFL stars to small business owners as they pursue humorous endeavors that build on their famously unique personalities and accomplishments. As they set out to become successful business owners, the pros discover the new challenge that they’ve taken on is made significantly easier with a Wix website.Why so many jocks? “We couldn’t help ourselves,” says Omer Shai, chief marketing officer at Wix, which is based out of Tel Aviv with offices in San Francisco, New York, Vilnius and Dnepropetrovsk. “The chance to work with these legends was too much fun to pass up.“We developed a campaign that perfectly fits what Wix is all about: providing small businesses with powerful and easy to use tools to design, manage and grow their online presence. NFL legend or not, any business owner should be able to easily get their business online, just the way they want it.”And why these five players, specifically? Shai says it’s because they’re responsible for some of the NFL’s most memorable performances – such as Harris’s “immaculate reception” in the 1972 playoff game against the Oakland Raiders that is widely regarded as one of the greatest football plays of all time.But Rob Prazmark, president of 21 Sports & Entertainment Marketing Group, a sports marketing specialists, says the driver for this crew probably is something else: Retired NFL vets are bargains compared with active players. “It’s a lot cheaper to go with NFL greats – probably a 50% to 75% discount.”Wix.com is a leading cloud-based web development platform with over 58 million registered users worldwide. Wix believes its Super Bowl spot will be an instrumental part of a cross-platform branding campaign geared towards taking the Wix brand to the next level and turning it into a household name.USA Today contributed to this report.
