In “Saturday Night Live’s” first year on air, Chevy Chase was among the cast members who took part in live ads for Polaroid camera, all during certain commercial breaks. On Sunday, cast members who appear in a red-carpet pre-event ahead of the show’s 50th anniversary special will see a lot more from sponsors.
Volkswagen will drop off attendees at the site. Allstate will sponsor an on-screen countdown clock, letting viewers know how much time is left before the main event starts. Capital One will back a “fan pit” where onlookers can watch as various luminaries walk by. And Maybelline will host a “Last Look Lounge” where celebrities can touch up before going in front of the paparazzi. In the weeks leading up to Sunday’s event, NBC viewers have seen other interesting efforts, including a Capital One ad featuring Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon reprising their “SNL” roles as the host of the inadvertently saucy public-radio program “Delicious Dish,” or the “Please Don’t Destroy” trio in a chaotic spot for Allstate.
“SNL” has long had a complex relationship with advertising. Advertisers covet the big, simultaneous crowds flocking to the screen to watch it, even as they recognize that there will be times when the show may make fun of them, as it has in years past with American Express, Olive Garden and Safelite (which in 2017 was able to convince the show to remove a parody that depicted one of the company’s glass-repair specialists trying to hit on a customer’s teenage daughter). Ties to “SNL” have always been desirable, but often tough to obtain. Now, says Mark Marshall, chairman of NBCUniversal’s global advertising and partnerships unit, brands are “interacting with this iconic show in a new way.”
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Should “SNL” fans expect to see sponsors lining up to insert their names into actual segments of the show? Probably not. But Lorne Michaels, the show’s longtime executive producer, has allowed marketers to create deeper associations with the program than he has in the past, just as he has given cast members more leeway to appear in commercials themselves. To be sure, every episode of “SNL” is filled with traditional TV pitches from T-Mobile, Apple and others, but Michaels has long guarded the program against being seen as mere wallpaper for Madison Avenue logos and slogans.
To devise the recent ad deals, NBC started discussions months ahead of schedule. In March of 2023, Michaels made a presentation in Studio 8H, the longtime home of “SNL” at NBC’s New York headquarters, to around 100 advertisers about what to expect from the anniversary. At the time, NBC, um, sketched out plans for a series of retrospectives around “SNL” as well as at least one documentary about the program.
“So many CMOs I talk to continue to say they want to do fewer, bigger, better integrations, and in order to do that, you really have to start earlier,” Marshall says.
Executives at Capital One, which regularly uses humor in its array of “What’s In Your Wallet” commercials, thought the “SNL” anniversary would be “unique,” says Cynthia Epley, vice president of brand media at the company, who notes there are few TV events surfacing in the current era that can draw audiences across broadcast and digital, and still pull the gaze of multiple generations of viewers. The company was mindful that its ideas “had to remain authentic to the program,” she adds, and happy to discover that Gasteyer and Shannon “were willing to work with us” and interested in reviving their popular characters.
Advertising alliances with “SNL” in the past were largely of the one-and-done variety, certainly capturing attention, but then fading from the conversation. The show created three sketches in 2009 that had cast member Will Forte doing his “MacGruber” character in what were essentially commercials for Pepsi. The spots appeared in ad breaks supporting a January “SNL” broadcast, and one of them showed up in NBC’s broadcast a day later of Super Bowl XLIII. In that same year, “SNL” allowed Anheuser Busch InBev to purchase all the national ad time surrounding the program to hawk a brew called Bud Light Golden Wheat. In exchange, the beer-maker sponsored a series of never-before-aired comedy segments from the show’s rehearsals during commercial breaks.
These stunts certainly raised eyebrows, but advertisers are more interested in concepts that can be repeated over time — making more effective use of their massive ad budgets. One of the key points of the offering around “SNL50,” says Marshall, is a commitment to make sure the show tie-ins are seen across NBC’s portfolio of media properties.
Now that NBC has built something for the “SNL” anniversary, he says, the company would like to utilize the structure for other tentpoles. NBCUniversal plans to highlight NBC’s 100th anniversary during the industry’s next “upfront” ad-sales cycle, when TV networks try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory. A new “BravoCon” live event is also in the works, he says. Both could benefit from an early process that allows for more planning.
Getting advertisers involved more deeply in a program has other rewards. NBC expects “record revenue” from ad sales tied to the 50th season of “SNL,” Marshall says, “and we have sold out every impression on every platform for the whole season.” The best thing about the sell-it-in-advance structure, he adds, is that it adds extra luster to something marketers cannot buy from anyone else. “The only people who can sell an advertisement in ‘SNL’ work at NBCU.”