The Secret Perception of Women Making Super Bowl Ads Last Sunday more than 100 million viewers saw the first-ever Skittles Super Bowl commercial, the trailer for which, "It Will Be Settled," had almost out-buzzed the previous tag, "Taste the Rainbow." The spot was made by two female creative directors at DDB Chicago who, upon hearing their work landed in the most coveted, high profile ad venue ever, could barely believe their good fortune: except that their success was predicted by a fortune cookie.
The "how" and "why" of the story is a dream discussion for material scientists, statistics geeks, and Psi-theorists (scientists who study anomalous psychological phenomena). The unlikely circumstances seem to suggest an x factor, call it an invisible hand, a twist of fate, a fluke, a coinkidink, or maybe a yet to be discovered aspect of our extended, non-local, mind.
The backstory: two veteran creative directors, Marisa Groenweghe and Kathleen Tax, were in a bit of a creative slump, a normal but irritating aspect of the advertising industry. Though they had made hit commercials for Skittles in the past ("Smile" about a girl's kiss on a Skittle-mouthed boy) their preliminary scripts hadn't been chosen this round. In fact, nobody's had. So an international development call went out from their agency, DDB Worldwide. More scripts came in from all over the world. Marisa and Kathy again submitted work. Word came that whichever spot was chosen for production would also be in contention for the Super Bowl.
The stakes were officially raised.
We all know from watching Mad Men that the variables while making advertisements can fluctuate quite a bit (time, money, "office politics"). Though the business has definitely improved for women since the days of Don Draper, the likelihood of any one spot going straight to the top right away is still very, very slim. Nearly 500 scripts were being considered, and dozens of executives, from both Wrigley and DDB Worldwide were weighing in. Marisa and Kathy knew back and forth was fairly routine. Riding the rollercoaster of "maybe" and "oh well" is a big part of the job for the creative department.
But they had never had a Super Bowl spot, and they wanted one.
Fast forward a few months. They hadn't heard anything. Making commercials is a bit like making a law, and, as many politicians like to say, like making sausage. It is a lengthy, messy process, and seasoned creatives know that even when their spot gets close to the top, until the camera is actually rolling, it could still lose.
Marisa and Kathy carried on with other projects. Kathy got married and Marisa went out of town -- really out of town. A friend had rented a castle in France and was throwing a birthday party for a dozen close friends, when she got the email their spot was likely the one. "It was quite a place to get an email like that," she remembers. "I had long given up all hope of producing a Super Bowl spot for Skittles. So the email came entirely out of the blue."
But here's the coincidence: The day Marisa got back into town, she and Kathy went to Panda Express to celebrate being back in the running (not sure how that place warranted a celebration lunch, but that's what they did). They had gotten in the habit of assigning their cookie fortunes some meaning in advance. i.e. "This one's about your love life" or "this one's about your new apartment." Marisa picked up her cookie and said, "Obviously this one will be about the Super Bowl!"
She cracked it open and read.
The fortune said: "The rainbow's treasures will soon belong to you."
As Skittles creatives, the rainbow image in the fortune was inseparable from the "Taste the Rainbow" tag, and thus, from their future with Skittles. And they did in fact win. But did the cookie have anything to do with it? Did they somehow know to choose that particular cookie?
"There are so many stories like this, it's why we do lab experiments," says cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, who, as a visiting scholar at Northwestern University and founder of The Mossbridge Institute, specializes in the psychology and physiology of time. "The obvious skeptical (and reasonable) reply is that the two creative directors had "confirmation bias" (which occurs after an unlikely incident takes place). "That's why we do double-blind controlled studies in which people can't assign a meaning after the fact to an event. While the results of these studies do often confirm something wild is going on, we still never know in a case outside the lab if there was an example of precognition or presentiment."
Bernard Beitman, MD, Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia and founder of an emerging field of Coincidence Studies, puts the coincidence in terms of the probability created by two intersecting "life lines" of the scenario. "One life line is the rate at which rainbows appear in the fortune cookies at Panda Express. The other life line is the rate which at least one of these women opens fortune cookies at Panda Express. If you multiply these two base rates, you get a fairly high probability, but it doesn't fully explain the results. The other variable at work is the highly energized idea of a rainbow in their minds. Highly energized thoughts seem to help make coincidences happen in ways we do not yet understand."
According to Beitman, who is the first psychiatrist to attempt to categorize coincidences since Jung, the women were able to select just the right fortune cookie that then "became a predictor of their future."
But did it really?
"At that moment, I knew we would win," said Marisa. "And we did."
The "how" and "why" of the story is a dream discussion for material scientists, statistics geeks, and Psi-theorists (scientists who study anomalous psychological phenomena). The unlikely circumstances seem to suggest an x factor, call it an invisible hand, a twist of fate, a fluke, a coinkidink, or maybe a yet to be discovered aspect of our extended, non-local, mind.
The backstory: two veteran creative directors, Marisa Groenweghe and Kathleen Tax, were in a bit of a creative slump, a normal but irritating aspect of the advertising industry. Though they had made hit commercials for Skittles in the past ("Smile" about a girl's kiss on a Skittle-mouthed boy) their preliminary scripts hadn't been chosen this round. In fact, nobody's had. So an international development call went out from their agency, DDB Worldwide. More scripts came in from all over the world. Marisa and Kathy again submitted work. Word came that whichever spot was chosen for production would also be in contention for the Super Bowl.
The stakes were officially raised.
We all know from watching Mad Men that the variables while making advertisements can fluctuate quite a bit (time, money, "office politics"). Though the business has definitely improved for women since the days of Don Draper, the likelihood of any one spot going straight to the top right away is still very, very slim. Nearly 500 scripts were being considered, and dozens of executives, from both Wrigley and DDB Worldwide were weighing in. Marisa and Kathy knew back and forth was fairly routine. Riding the rollercoaster of "maybe" and "oh well" is a big part of the job for the creative department.
But they had never had a Super Bowl spot, and they wanted one.
Fast forward a few months. They hadn't heard anything. Making commercials is a bit like making a law, and, as many politicians like to say, like making sausage. It is a lengthy, messy process, and seasoned creatives know that even when their spot gets close to the top, until the camera is actually rolling, it could still lose.
Marisa and Kathy carried on with other projects. Kathy got married and Marisa went out of town -- really out of town. A friend had rented a castle in France and was throwing a birthday party for a dozen close friends, when she got the email their spot was likely the one. "It was quite a place to get an email like that," she remembers. "I had long given up all hope of producing a Super Bowl spot for Skittles. So the email came entirely out of the blue."
But here's the coincidence: The day Marisa got back into town, she and Kathy went to Panda Express to celebrate being back in the running (not sure how that place warranted a celebration lunch, but that's what they did). They had gotten in the habit of assigning their cookie fortunes some meaning in advance. i.e. "This one's about your love life" or "this one's about your new apartment." Marisa picked up her cookie and said, "Obviously this one will be about the Super Bowl!"
She cracked it open and read.
The fortune said: "The rainbow's treasures will soon belong to you."
As Skittles creatives, the rainbow image in the fortune was inseparable from the "Taste the Rainbow" tag, and thus, from their future with Skittles. And they did in fact win. But did the cookie have anything to do with it? Did they somehow know to choose that particular cookie?
"There are so many stories like this, it's why we do lab experiments," says cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, who, as a visiting scholar at Northwestern University and founder of The Mossbridge Institute, specializes in the psychology and physiology of time. "The obvious skeptical (and reasonable) reply is that the two creative directors had "confirmation bias" (which occurs after an unlikely incident takes place). "That's why we do double-blind controlled studies in which people can't assign a meaning after the fact to an event. While the results of these studies do often confirm something wild is going on, we still never know in a case outside the lab if there was an example of precognition or presentiment."
Bernard Beitman, MD, Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia and founder of an emerging field of Coincidence Studies, puts the coincidence in terms of the probability created by two intersecting "life lines" of the scenario. "One life line is the rate at which rainbows appear in the fortune cookies at Panda Express. The other life line is the rate which at least one of these women opens fortune cookies at Panda Express. If you multiply these two base rates, you get a fairly high probability, but it doesn't fully explain the results. The other variable at work is the highly energized idea of a rainbow in their minds. Highly energized thoughts seem to help make coincidences happen in ways we do not yet understand."
According to Beitman, who is the first psychiatrist to attempt to categorize coincidences since Jung, the women were able to select just the right fortune cookie that then "became a predictor of their future."
But did it really?
"At that moment, I knew we would win," said Marisa. "And we did."
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