Conspiracy Behind ‘Elevator’ Super Bowl Ad

Every year a week after the Super Bowl there seems to be some controversy with a commercial that turns into an advertising industry conspiracy theory. This year is no exception. We are all familiar with the Hyundai commercial created by Innocean where Jason Bateman, the star of Netflix original show “Ozarks” plays the operator of an elevator from hell, taking unfortunate passengers to all sorts of awful places like jury duty and a vegan dinner party before they saw the white light in the form of Hyundai’s Shopper Assurance service. See the ad below, it was featured in Inside That Ad’s 2019 Super Bowl Central.

Three days ago, I discovered from AgencySpy that the online mattress startup Saatva released an ad with unbelievable similarities to the one featured above just a few weeks earlier. The agency that worked on Saatva spot was Preacher, a small agency in Austin, Texas.

The Similarities

Both Protagonists are elevator bellhops taking would be customers to multiple levels of consumer hell before they finally arrive in brand nirvana. Both ads show customers riding the elevator to their respective versions of hell. For example, Hyundai customer stops at a floor for a root canal and a vegan dinner party. While Saatva customers go through errant search results or the possibility of going to an actual brick-n0-mortar mattress store. On the last floor, both sets of customer customers find their nirvana with the main brand of the commercial.

Conclusion

The two brands did confirm that the campaigns were developed independently and that the likeness had to be a coincidence. Although that statement is hard to believe right? The ad world can be like a fraternity after all – where everybody knows everybody else. People talk to others outside of their own shop and a lot of their conversations are probably about work as long as they are not direct competitors.