While “The Hunt” may have been created for one of the biggest marketers in the world, and aired during both the U.S and Canadian Super Bowl telecast, it added a real Canadian sensibility to the big game on Sunday night.
Produced by the Media Arts Lab team from Toronto, which is part of Juniper Park\TBWA, “The Hunt” showed Canadian hockey greats P.K. Subban and Joe Thornton looking for a missing tooth, on an outdoor rink, in the middle of the night, using only the flashlight from their iPhones. The soundtrack is the 1968 song “Where Are You?” by Herb Johnson & the Impacts.
Thorton finally finds a tooth, but when Subban sticks into his mouth, they realize it’s the wrong one and go back to searching—able to do so thanks to the longer battery life of the iPhone 14. The ad is part of Apple’s “Relax, it’s iPhone” campaign.
The ad seemed well-received by Canadians and hockey fans alike. “It’s an undeniably silly 38-second ad, but it’s also still pretty funny, and it’s not often that Apple makes ads specifically targeting the Canadian market,” said MobileSyrup.
“This was easily one of the funnier ads of the night. It was an amazing choice by Apple to use two of the most beloved personalities the game has had recently,” said The Hockey News, thought HockeyBeast was more effusive, running their story under the headline: “P.K. Subban and Joe Thornton team-up in the best commercial we have ever seen, this is pure gold.”
