Behind The Farmer’s Dog’s unusual path to Super Bowl glory

Watching this year’s Super Bowl was a particularly special experience for Teressa Iezzi. As a former Creativity editor at Ad Age, she used to scrutinize the ads during the game, but now, the spot she co-wrote for The Farmer’s Dog was among the Big Game commercials.

“As somebody who once reviewed ads, I really felt the stress of having your work critiqued by that large audience,” said Iezzi, who is now creative director and director of content at The Farmer's Dog.

Fortunately for Iezzi, who conceptualized the spot alongside Sophie Forman, creative director and director of brand design at the company, not only were the reactions positive, but they exceeded all expectations. The story of a chocolate Labrador called Bear who grows up alongside his owner, from childhood through to becoming part of her new family, has struck a huge emotional chord. The spot topped the USA Today Ad Meter—which has long been one of the top postgame rankings—beating out the likes of Dunkin’s Ben Affleck and J-Lo ad. It also gained the top score in measurements by Samba pertaining to viewership for individual ads.

“We were blown away by the response,” said Iezzi. “The experience of the Super Bowl is hard to put into words, but the explosion of emotion on social media, the reaction, the people sharing the stories of their dogs—I don’t think we expected that.”

In fact, the whole experience has been somewhat unexpected. Back when the pair were creating the spot last fall, they had no idea it would end up running in the Big Game.

“Had we known it would be a Super Bowl spot, it probably would have been a lot more stressful,” admitted Iezzi.

At first, the idea was simply to create a piece of brand storytelling for Farmer’s Dog, the DTC pet food brand founded in 2015. Previous marketing had been more product-focused, which had made sense “because our fresh food is so completely different from status-quo pet food,” said Iezzi. “But our mission is helping people give their dogs a long, full life, and for this campaign we wanted to bring that to life and bring something that was more emotional in the dog-human relationship.”

The pair felt that showing a dog growing older over time with its owner would “really capture what having a dog really means in your life,” said Iezzi. They co-wrote the script; the next step was bringing in a director who could “deliver the emotional punch but also had an interesting visual style,” she added.

That director turned out to be Goh Iromoto of Sanctuary. “When he first presented his treatment to us, we were in tears even from that, and we knew this was our person,” said Forman.

Iromoto is himself a dog lover who grew up with a dog, similar to the protagonist in the film. “He was showing us pictures of how he had chronicled their life in photos, and to some extent those images found their way into our story," Forman said.

Casting was also key. Not only did the team have to find three similar-looking actresses of different ages to portray the protagonist, but they also had to do the same for the dog. In the end, production used five dogs: two puppies, a young adult, an adult and a senior dog. However, the original senior dog had to “bow out” late in the process, and there was a last-minute scramble to replace him, explained Forman.

Getting it right was essential because “we knew the older dog was going to be key to translating the emotion in the spot,” said Forman.

Eventually they found a dog who was not an actor but a veterinarian’s personal pet. “He totally hit his marks, and he brought out the soul of the ad,” said Forman.

The final scene, with the woman, her partner, her dog and her baby, has special emotional resonance, and a key part of the puzzle was making the aging of the dog in the spot believable. 

“We had consciously wanted to push what people expect in terms of a dog’s age but not push reality,” said Forman. “But we have a good number of dogs who live late into their teens or even 20s. We wanted to start a conversation around what long life really means in a dog.” As part of the wider campaign, the brand will show videos of dogs who are well into their teens, she said, and even a dog who is 21 years old.

For an in-house team, taking on a large-scale production such as this was a big enough step. The team only started thinking about the Super Bowl once the spot was complete and “the reaction in our company was so strong that we realized we want to bring this to the biggest stage possible,” said Iezzi. 

Then, everything happened “very quickly,” she added.

“It was wild that the opportunity was still available,” continued Forman. “We had shown the ad to the company leadership and we were getting this outpouring of reactions. We talked about running a regional Super Bowl ad, but then the inventory was there for a national ad and we hopped on it.”

Then there was the question of length. The company had discussed running a 30-second spot. “We had some good 30-second edits, but they don’t tell the complete story and give the emotional range and seeing the life in its completion. So they decided to invest in the :60,” said Forman. “That was such an exciting decision from a creative point of view, but it also paid off from a business point of view as well because people did feel the impact of the :60.”