Workday unveils Super Bowl ad—Jim Jenkins on directing five rockstars at once

Once upon a time, rockstars couldn’t show their faces in advertising for fear of being labeled sellouts.

Thankfully, those days are gone. In fact, Workday’s first-ever Super Bowl commercial, unveiled Monday, features no fewer than five rock legends, all of whom are gleefully partaking in advertising’s biggest night—even if, in the context of the ad itself, they’re actually quite grumpy indeed.

This is due to an amusing premise from the agency, Ogilvy—that these actual rockers are ticked off by the increasingly casual use of the term rockstar, particularly when it refers to overachievers in the workplace.

The 60-second spot, which you can watch below, stars Paul Stanley of KISS, Ozzy Osbourne, Joan Jett, Billy Idol and Gary Clark Jr. The ad will air during the third quarter of Sunday’s game.

Speaking with Ad Age last month, Workday’s chief marketing officer, Pete Schlampp, said the goal of the Super Bowl campaign is to make the workplace management software provider more of a household name—not just among managers at companies but among employees who benefit from the software as well. A Super Bowl buy was a great way to reach both, he said. (Days later, the company said it was laying off 525 workers, but that its Super Bowl plans were not changing.)

To bring the rockstars idea to life, they hired Jim Jenkins of O Positive to direct. Jenkins, a longtime Super Bowl veteran whose previous Big Game spots include classics like Snickers' “Brady Bunch” in 2015 and Jeep's “Groundhog Day” in 2020, told Ad Age he was immediately drawn to Ogilvy’s concept.

“It’s clearly just a fertile comedic idea,” he said. “I have relatives who work in offices and refer to each other as rockstars. It immediately resonated with me.”

Jenkins said the original script wasn’t set in an office, but they quickly realized the fish-out-of-water comic potential of putting these rockers in the corporate world.

“It’s a bit of a cerebral idea, so we needed the quicker visual joke,” he said. “It's not the bigness of the visual, because bigness doesn't matter as long as the comedy lands. But seeing Ozzy in an office—it's a quick read of how different rockstars are as people. Gary Clark Jr., the coolest man alive, standing next to that office worker. It’s just funny.”

Not surprisingly, the biggest hurdle was scheduling time with all the celebs, and then figuring out how best to use each one.

“Especially if you do a lot of dialogue, you can tell quickly what people's strengths are. That's anybody, even actors,” Jenkins said. “A lot of it was quick tailoring—this person would be better for this part, that person for that part. Comedy isn't necessarily their thing—acting isn't even their thing. Athletes, musicians, everybody wants to come off looking good, even if you're kind of poking fun at them. If they're in on the joke, it helps a lot.”

On that note, the “Oswald” moment is a nice touch—even if Ozzy’s given name is actually John.

Ian Mackenzie at Mackcut did the edit. Parliament did the post-production. Everything was tailored to the Super Bowl environment, where, let’s just say, nuance doesn’t always come through.

“People have been drinking or they’re in loud venues. It’s sometimes good to keep the comedy more visual,” Jenkins said. “It’s about making the story really clear. This will be in the third quarter, too. Honestly, it’s a little easier in the first or second. Although ‘Groundhog Day’ ran in the fourth and that did OK.”

Jenkins credits Workday for going big in its first Super Bowl appearance, and believes the spot will land well on the big day.

“Super Bowl spots—when they're good, they're great,” he said. “This idea is clever. Credit the agency, and also for Workday for buying this. It's a bit of a brave thing to do—a :60 like this. I do hope it helps them become more of a household name.”