84 Lumber ad builds exposure
A controversial 84 Lumber Co. Super Bowl ad aimed at helping the national building materials supplier gain wider exposure and attract recruits for its management-trainee program appears to have accomplished its mission.
According to media reports Monday, the rejected conclusion of the 90-second, $15 million ad, which depicts a mother and daughter making a long trek across the desert in Mexico to a wall dividing their country from the United States, drew several million views in the hour after it was posted on the Journey84.com website Sunday. According to Brunner, the Pittsburgh-based ad agency that created the spot, the website did not crash, but temporarily throttled the first 300,000 viewers who accessed the site in the first minute and allowed only half the audience to view the conclusion. The site was quickly restored to allow all viewers access.
Brunner Public Relations Account Manager Meredith Klein said Monday that cumulatively, the Super Bowl ad and its conclusion at Journey84.com received 40 million views since Friday when the ad was released.
Klein said it was too early to tell how many people requested information about applying to the company’s trainee program.
The overwhelming response also was noted by Twitter Advertising, which ranked the 84 Lumber ad in the top 10 of ads being discussed on Twitter after they aired. That put 84 Lumber in the company of Budweiser, Pepsi, T-Mobile, Audi, Skittles, Doritos and Intel.
The 84 Lumber Super Bowl ad ended with the pair being stopped at a seemingly impassable wall at the U.S. border, but directed viewers to see the conclusion at the 84 Lumber website.
84 Lumber said in a news release that the reason for the truncated message that was aired just before halftime of Sunday’s game was that it was deemed too controversial to air during the Super Bowl by Fox.
Rather than changing its message, the nation’s largest privately held building materials company decided to tell the full story, as it was intended, online at Journey84.com.
The themes of hard work, dedication and sacrifice depicted throughout the film “are the same ideals valued in 84 Lumber employees,” the company said, adding that it is not just offering jobs, but careers.
The controversial ending that was rejected by Fox features a door in a border wall that ultimately allows the mother and daughter to complete their journey. The company said the door is a symbol of the doors that it opens for its employees, regardless of their race, ethnicity, background or orientation.
“Even President Trump has said there should be a ‘big beautiful door in the wall so that people can come into this country legally,” said 84 Lumber president and owner Maggie Hardy Magerko. “It’s not about the wall. It’s about the door in the wall. If people are willing to work hard and make this country better, that door should be open to them.”
The company said the film was created to position 84 Lumber as a company of opportunity for the next generation of the housing industry.
Sunday’s ad was the launch of a yearlong campaign by the company to recruit management trainees as it plans to open about 15 stores in various markets across the country in 2017.
During an interview with the Observer-Reporter two weeks ago, 84 Lumber Chief Operating Officer Frank Cicero said the management-trainee post is key to filling positions throughout the company.
“By hiring the best management-trainee candidates we can find, we subsequently use that to grow all of our positions in the company,” Cicero said. “We take what we have as a core culture and make it go across the country in any market that you want to go to.”