Last week I shared with you the teaser, and then the trailer for Olay’s first ever Super Bowl ad starring Sarah Michelle Gellar titled “Killer Skin.” The ad brought back the 90’s genre actress back into the horror fold as we caught glimpses of a masked intruder terrorizing the star and her significant other. Ahead of the commercial’s debut during Super Bowl LIII Olay has released the commercial online, which you can watch below.
For me, the full commercial reveal wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped. Because its a 30 second spot I feel we got most of the commercial already in the teaser and ultimately the trailer. Also, since its a 30 secondspot there is no suspense build up, which is pretty much a core element of horror. In an interview Gellar had previously commented that, “…this is going to be the kind of commercial that people remember and talk about the next day.” If people do talk about this ad, its likely because it breaks the mold of beauty advertising and took a risk. It’s cool that a beauty brand experimented with genre to sell its product, but overall, the commercial fell flat for me.
I think Olay had an opportunity here where they could have made this a longer overall commercial and run multiple spots where the first builds up the suspense and introduces us to the intruder and then at a later commercial break we get the resolve, or in this case, the punchline. Who knows, maybe there will be more to this when the commercial airs during Super Bowl LIII.
