LG Plans Two Airings Sunday Night of Its First-Ever Super Bowl Commercial

The first-ever Super Bowl commercial from LG Electronics, touting the company’s OLED TV technology (see 1512160057), is scheduled to run during the second commercial break after halftime and again during the first commercial break of the CBS postgame show, LG spokesman John Taylor told us Wednesday. He wouldn't say how much LG is spending to produce and air the 60-second spot, which is the first Super Bowl ad run by a major CE manufacturer in several years. CBS is charging advertisers $5 million per 30-second spot to run a Super Bowl commercial, CEO Leslie Moonves said on a quarterly earnings call in August. To produce the spot, LG hired RSA Films, the production company run by Ridley Scott, who directed the Apple commercial during the January 1984 Super Bowl that launched the Macintosh. He also directed The Martian, which has been nominated for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards, though Scott himself was denied a Best Director nomination. The LG Super Bowl spot stars Liam Neeson as a man from the future who visits the present to declare, "there's a revolution coming,” and “the future is staring back at us, like a perfect picture on glass.” An LG statement said the spot focuses “on how LG brings future-forward home entertainment innovations to consumers today with LG’s revolutionary OLED TV technology.” But early reviews haven’t been favorable since LG released the spot Monday on YouTube. LG “are rookies in the Super Bowl commercial game,” and it shows, said a writeup in the Washington Post. “For an ad that is apparently about a television, we sure get a lot of other stuff that’s not exactly the easiest to understand.” It compared the LG spot unfavorably with another "masterpiece" Super Bowl ad for the Mini automobile, featuring Serena Williams. Another review, from Engadget, said the LG spot represents “cheesy sci-fi,” and “aside from the strange sight of Neeson as an LG spokesman, there's little that sets it apart from the plethora of big-budget Super Bowl ads.”