Former “Today” show co-hosts Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel are featured in new Super Bowl commercial for BMW, which mocks the duo’s internet ignorance during a 1994 segment of the morning show. But it turns out the ad is not as pure as the then-“Today” hosts’ tech naivety, TheWrap discovered that producers of the ad actually altered the clip.
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In the original segment (below left), “Today” returns from a commercial break. Gumbel clarifies a “tease” he made before the break where he apparently read an email address tied to a story about violence: “Violence@nbc.ge.com.” In BMW’s Super Bowl ad using portions of the same clip (below right), the email address is “info@amfeedbackcom.” Gumbel also gave a new voice-over read to match the new email address that seamlessly matches the track of the 21-year-old dialogue.
In 1994, the dialogue with Katie Couric and third co-host (who is cut out of the BMW ad) suggests that Gumbel bumbled the then-unfamiliar internet syntax, “@” (“at symbol”). The ad also cuts down the Couric-Gumbel banter from the original segment.
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“There was some movie magic involved,” Paul Renner, Executive Creative Director for Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, the agency who conceived and produced the spot told TheWrap.
“But we were very careful to keep the integrity of the clip. We wanted to make sure the pure confusion of the moment (‘What is Internet Anyway?’) was untouched. You can’t make this stuff up, and we certainly didn’t want people who were seeing the clip for the first time to think we did make it up. We were all in the same boat as Katie and Bryant back in 1994.”
Internet registry records reveal that the domain “amfeedback.com” was created in December 2014. “We created the site name,” Renner revealed.
The original “What is the internet, anyway?” clip has been viral for years, drawing 1.6 million views since VortexTech posted it in 2011. By comparison, BMW’s spot “Newfangled Idea” has drawn 7.1 million views since it was posted five days ago.
From a contemporary perspective, the clip channels the same eerie fairy-tale incredulity of Aureliano Buendia’s discovery of “ice” in the opening lines of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” It is the same psychological analog that BMW is highlighting in today’s mass perception of electric vehicles as a “newfangled idea,” the name of their buzzy Super Bowl spot.
To be fair, had the “Today” clip been presented unedited, it would have been out of context and confusing. Moreover, the choice to own and control the domain “amfeedback.com” and avoid a reference to violence is hardly surprising.
BMW’s decision to not want to associate “Violence in America” with their brand after NFL’s Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson domestic violence scandals sounds like a smart creative choice, though there is no disclaimer or notice that the footage and Gumbel’s voice-over has been doctored.
Of licensing the “Today” show clip, there would appear to be an efficiency with the NBC-aired game airing the commercial featuring NBC-sourced footage.
“NBC just said as long as Katie and Bryant agree to do it, we are good to go,” Renner told TheWrap.
Gumbel signed on first and they shot the ad in mid-December.
In addition to KBS, which has worked with BMW since 2005, the ad team includes Dayton Faris from BOB Industries in Los Angeles.