QBSS+
In a pitch‑off against three other agencies, we won the chance to make a Super Bowl campaign that showed a funnier side of safety. Then we made it without buying a single second of in‑game airtime.
The moment
The 2018 NFL season was consumed by a new rule that made touching — much less tackling — a quarterback nearly impossible. Safety became the hottest argument in football. That was Lexus’s opening.
The idea
QBSS+, a suite of quarterback safety technologies loosely based on Lexus’s industry‑leading LSS+ system. Airbags in the pads. A blind side monitor. Anti‑heckling tech in the helmet. Precious quarterbacks, finally untouchable.
The catch
We weren’t buying in‑game airtime. Lexus wanted the hype of a Super Bowl ad without the media spend, so we built and rolled out a campaign that behaved exactly like a real one. It felt so much like a Super Bowl ad that the press covered it as a Super Bowl ad.