The world's last Blockbuster has a Super Bowl commercial, but you won't see it on TV during the game
Yelp/Scott K.
- The last Blockbuster in the world in Bend, Oregon, has teased a Super Bowl commercial on its Instagram.
- The posts tease an ad called "Blockbuster: Until the Bitter End," and have had a post-apocalyptic theme.
- The ad will debut on Instagram live during halftime of the game, and can also be rented as a VHS in the store.
The last surviving Blockbuster on the planet is advertising a commercial to be released during the Super Bowl, but you might need a VCR to watch it.
If not a VCR, an Instagram account likely will do. The last Blockbuster, in Bend, Oregon, has been teasing the upcoming ad on Instagram for the last few weeks.
On January 31, the store posted an image of a post-apocalyptic scene on an old TV, with a giant cockroach sitting on top of a Blockbuster.
But instead of paying millions to debut the ad during the Super Bowl like many companies — some more successfully than others — the last Blockbuster has a different plan.
In another teaser posted Thursday, the store announced that the commercial will be available as a VHS tape to rent in the store beginning Sunday, and also will be broadcast on the store's Instagram live during halftime.
The store posted multiple pictures of the VHS tape and case, teasing the commercial's title: "Blockbuster: Until the Bitter End." A new shirt related to the ad also was added to its existing merchandise.
The store's general manager, Sandi Harding, told CNN Business that the store has been getting excited calls since the teasers were first posted.
"I wanted to do two things with the ad. One was to show that small businesses can also do creative and fun things for the Super Bowl, and it's not just an opportunity for the big companies and their big ads," Harding told CNN. "We also want people to remember us, that we are here and our store is exactly the way a Blockbuster store was in the 1990s."
In the 1990s, Blockbuster was a household name, renting out movies and video games on VHS tapes, then DVDs, to millions across over 9,000 stores in the US. But with the increase of live programming on cable TV, rental services like Netflix, and the advent of streaming, the video giant was forced into bankruptcy by 2010.
The Bend, Oregon, store has operated as the last Blockbuster since 2019, when the second to last store in Australia permanently closed. Even with just one store left, the nostalgia of the '90s icon lives on in other ways, like the Blockbuster pop-up bar in Los Angeles toured by Danielle Bauter for Insider in December.
The Bend Blockbuster did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside normal operating hours.
Contributer : Business Insider https://ift.tt/VXj9Dqv
Reviewed by mimisabreena
on
Sunday, February 12, 2023
Rating:
No comments:
Post a Comment