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Yes, you read that right.
The things you learn… For instance… Today I learned that Quill.com, the huge office products company, actually has a line of Dunder Mifflin products. Yes, that Dunder Mifflin. As in, The Office. As in, The American (and much more popular) version of Wernham Hogg.
So the brilliant people at Quill.com decided to get in on the Super Bowl advertising hype this year, and have created a brilliant commercial that’s airing on TV only in (wait for it…) Scranton, PA. Scranton viewers will see it live early in the big football game’s third quarter, and it’s airing worldwide via the Interwebs, of course.
The spot, “Paper War,” was created via a contest on the Tongal crowdsourcing platform by Freddy Rabbath of Tallahassee, Florida, who won a $15,000 prize for making the winning ad. The selection committee included the executive producers of NBC’s “The Office” and executives from Quill.com and NBCUniversal.
“This is not a typical crowdsourcing campaign, because the ad must live up to the very high standards that ‘The Office’ has set over the past eight years,” said Kim Niemi, Senior Vice President, NBCUniversal Television Consumer Products Group. “The show’s producers insisted that the ad be true to the spirit of the show in a manner that was completely original, and we’re proud of the outcome.”
OK, seriously – How fun is this? Here’s the ad airing in Scranton on Sunday:
Note the cat. (Which makes me happy.)
And here’s the unaired, never-before-seen Dunder Mifflin ad that ALMOST wound up in the Super Bowl: