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Big advertisers have created an army of lively product ambassadors over the decades to help sell web services, insurance, and sunscreen. Toucan Sam, Tony the Tiger and Mr. Clean were always good soldiers you could count on to extol the virtues of breakfast cereals or cleaning liquid in 30 seconds or less.
However, two new brand agents are acting more like rogue employees.
Rick and Morty, a bizarre squad of grandfather and grandson from the Adult Swim series of the same name, quickly became a go-to duo to boost commercials like Wendy’s, Wrangler, and even consumer goods giant Kellogg Co. on Friday. , the animated pair will try to spotlight Sony Corp’s new PlayStation 5.
The creators of Anxious Morty and Flint Rick have “an outrageous approach to pop culture and entertainment,” said Eric Lempel, senior vice president and head of global marketing for Sony Interactive Entertainment, which executives rely on ” create an iconic moment. “He should know. In 2019, Sony brought in Rick and Morty and their human backers to design an ad for ‘Death Stranding,’ a new version of the game. The storyline is hard to sum up, but suffice it to say that the two characters discuss the pros and cons of eating on a baby who accompanies them on their travels.
The new PlayStation spot puts Rick and Morty on what could be their strangest adventure yet – they actually understand they’re doing a commercial. “Talk about the thing – they paid us a lot!” Says Rick, who continues to baffle Morty with a flurry of stage directions. He has a big pile of money all the time.
The two animated characters “really energize,” says Jimmy Bennett, vice president of marketing at Wendy’s and former director of marketing at Adult Swim.
Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith weren’t suddenly made available for marketing purposes. Indeed, they helped fast food chain Carl’s Jr. bring meat dishes like the Thickburger to life in a bustling 2015 venue. Yet it was a Pringles ad featuring the two characters that made its mark. Debut earlier this year in the Super Bowl that really drew attention to the couple’s talent for launching products, says Tricia Melton, director of marketing for children, young adults and the classics for Warner Brothers. division. “It didn’t hurt,” she said in an interview.
Advertisers have long been drawn to subversive and quirky cartoon characters. Nestlé, then maker of Butterfinger, called on Bart Simpson as the candy spokesperson for more than a decade starting in the late 1980s. The Subway restaurant chain called on “Family Guy” patriarch Peter Griffin in 2007, making him read an ode to “the subway party”.
Rick and Morty are doing the trick, however, in a decidedly different time – a time when advertisers are more concerned with offending consumers or triggering the bad red or blue sentiment. Part of the characters’ success comes from being used in mobile apps and social content, making them familiar to people across a wider range of media.
The couple regularly travel to new dimensions as part of the series’ storyline, in which grandfather and mad scientist Rick takes his shy grandson to bizarre worlds. Now, executives at WarnerMedia need to make sure fans don’t worry about Rick and Morty taking to Madison Avenue on a regular basis. Can they continue to monetize the pair beyond TV without alienating fans who probably don’t want to see them sell themselves?
“We have to take care of the brand carefully and make sure we don’t over-market it,” says Melton. “We want to thread this needle intelligently,” she adds, because “we have such confidence with our fans.”
Don’t expect Rick or Morty to sing a slogan or tell viewers they can buy something on the cheap, she says. “The rules are really ‘working with us and trusting us’, because what we’re probably not going to do – if they are to be in control or need a partnership where someone is going to repeat the RBIs and brand talking points, “characters cannot participate. Partnerships typically start with an agreement to buy ad inventory on Adult Swim, Melton says, and then extend to pacts where marketers can license characters for other uses.
“We work really hard so that no one is grimacing,” says Melton.
Rick and Morty’s marketing mandates are very similar to those advertisers have heard over the years when they’ve tried working with Stephen Colbert. The late night host has, during his years with Comedy Central and CBS, worked for advertisers ranging from Kraft to Google. But it typically makes it clear that it won’t read the pre-scripted lines, according to media buyers who have run integrations with its programs. Instead, Colbert enjoys creating original content for his audience that incorporates the products into humor.
The same is true of Rick and Morty, Melton says. Creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon are often involved in the design of commercial content, or at least manage to endorse it. The idea is to keep fans of the characters entertained by giving them more adventures with their favorites, Melton says – and that sometimes means ad partners have to give up some authority.
WarnerMedia has good reason to keep Rick and Morty under a little glass. The characters have been with Adult Swim since 2013 and have been so popular that Adult Swim in 2018 ordered 70 more episodes of the series – more than double the number of shows aired at the time. The show generated more than $ 71.3 million in advertising in 2019, according to Kantar, an ad spend tracker, from marketers who included Wendy’s, Geico and Amazon.
Madison Avenue longs for the duo because they attract young male consumers who don’t sit down and watch prime-time shows. “These are the guys who love burgers,” says Bennett, Wendy’s marketing manager, but they “were hard to find”. Adult Swim says “Rick and Morty” has been a top show among viewers between the ages of 18-24 and 18-34, and notes that its episodes have even garnered 7 million views on the HBO Max video streaming hub between June and August.
Sometimes Rick and Morty need to educate advertisers to their potential. The series ‘fourth season finale featured an “NX5 Planet Remover” laser that was sponsored (not really) by Wrangler, Kontoor Brands’ denim line. “We started getting calls left and right,” says Jenni Broyles, vice president and general manager of Wrangler, and executives saw a chance “to attract new consumers who liked“ Rick and Morty ”and expose them to what our jeans could do for them.
The company even created a denim jacket with a laser-etched “Rick and Morty” motif – a laser reference in the episode that generated the connection in the first place. “The jackets are sold out and we are restocking them right now,” Broyles says. Meanwhile, Rick and Morty’s journeys look set to continue.
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