For ‘SNL’ 50th Season, NBCUniversal Ad Chief Mark Marshall Says He Insisted On “A Sense Of Humor” From Sponsors

Mark Marshall, Chairman of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCUniversal, found himself in a rare position heading into the 50th anniversary season of Saturday Night Live.

Speaking on a panel Tuesday at Advertising Week New York, Marshall said there was so much interest from buyers that he was able to choose his preferred partners.

“This is not an easy one,” he said of the general advertiser experience in the milestone season. “You don’t have the same creative control, you know you’re going to lean on the show in a different way. I had many people, including one whom I saw earlier today, who said they wanted to be a part of it and I said that they couldn’t.” With a laugh, he continued, “We typically, in the sales group, don’t say that. But I was like, ‘Your brand doesn’t have a sense of humor. You’re brand doesn’t have enough … You’re going to be a pain in the ass.'”

Gesturing to panelists onstage from T-Mobile, Allstate, Volkswagen and Maybelline, Marshall added, “I love that these people signed up because their brands have the right tone that could live with this.”

The 30-minute panel teased a few ad details that had not previously been announced, including a forthcoming Please Don’t Destroy short featuring Allstate’s long-running Mayhem character. NBCU announced the key sponsors of the 50th season last May and made the anniversary a feature of its upfront presentation to advertisers. A prime time special has been scheduled for February 16 and other programming and sponsor activations during that the weekend are also in the works, though most details remain under wraps. “Without the brands, we wouldn’t have the whole weekend that we’re doing,” Marshall said.

Dave Marsey, SVP of Media & Growth Marketing at Allstate, was asked by moderator Willie Geist, co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe and NBC’s Sunday Today, what drew the insurance giant to live comedy.

Insurance tends to be a “low-interest category,” Marsey conceded, which “does provide some constraints, which I think in the end makes us do better work.”

Please Don’t Destroy, a troupe within the SNL staff, writes sketches and creates its own shorts with a tone that Marsey described as “entertaining chaos.” Their pieces tend to have “low stakes and get resolved by the end,” he added. The Mayhem character, portrayed in dozens of Allstate commercials over the years by actor Dean Winter, “does similar things, to show what can happen when you don’t have the right coverage.” The character “created the right environment and a construct so we wouldn’t be starting from scratch. That’s what’s helped us as we take a big leap as a brand by being part of SNL 50.”

Marsey said the result of the teaming would be revealed “soon.”

Speaking of teasers, Jessie Feinstein, SVP Marketing, Maybelline New York for L’Oréal USA mentioned a forthcoming spot featuring an actor to be announced using a long-lasting kind of lipstick. It has already aired one featuring former cast member Vanessa Bayer, who was depicted in a comedic bit partying all night and then using Maybelline make-up to make the dark circles under her eyes disappear.

In the months leading up to the current anniversary season, T-Mobile began curating a dedicated YouTube channel, “Beyond Studio 8-H.” It features cast members reflecting on their inspirations and favorites and satisfies a “craving” for behind-the-scenes content, said Kari Marshall, VP of Media, T-Mobile U.S. The goal is to deliver a “peek inside the studio that you can’t get anywhere else.”

Marshall said SNL, along with other live NBCU properties like the Olympics, sports, news and specials like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, separate the company from others in the marketplace.

“People crave that communal viewing experience,” he said, even if a significant amount of SNL tune-in occurs outside of the linear window. “Everyone can watch the Menendez Brothers [on Netflix], but I might watch it today and you’ll watch it three months from now. There is something about watching everything together at the same time that actually is binding. And we saw it this year with the Olympics, where we had 30-plus million people showing up to watch in prime time every single night. You can see it on all of the social channels. It’s all anyone is talking about.”

SNL, Marshall added, may be 50 years old, but “it’s actually perfect for how it is distributed now. It’s in clips that are three to six minutes long and there is something unique and different about this.”

Geist said that “as someone with a front-row seat to our political dumpster fire every morning, I think you’re absolutely right that things like SNL and the Olympics have only been enhanced and elevated because, my God, we want an escape from the rest of what is going on.”