Best Buy's Serious Super Bowl Ad Will Spotlight Tech Inventors

The Best Buy Super Bowl commercial, airing in the first quarter of the Feb. 5 game, will spotlight inventors such as Philippe Kahn, who developed one of the first camera phones. Another is Kevin Systrom, who developed a free photo-sharing application called Instagram introduced on Apple’s app store in 2010.

“They may not be at the same level as Steve Jobs, but they created some amazing stuff,” said Best Buy’s U.S. marketing chief, Drew Panayiotou.

Trading in big names like Bieber and Osbourne for unknowns is a risk, he said.

“Big brands like to hire celebrities,” Panayiotou, 44, said by telephone Jan. 27. “We looked at everyone from George Clooney to Stephen Colbert. We believe the inventors are more than enough. I give those 125 million viewers a lot of credit. I think they’ll appreciate the story.”

The commercial will air during the third national commercial break of the matchup between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots in Indianapolis. It’s appearing in the same break as commercials for Anheuser Busch InBev, the maker of Budweiser beer, and Mars Inc., which plans to introduce a M&M candy character named Ms. Brown, according to its website.

Best Buy’s commercial isn’t “intended to be funny,” said Mike Vitelli, an Best Buy executive vice president. “It’s a statement that these people are inventing technology and what we’re inventing is a way to bring that technology to you and make it easy for you.”