Lawyer's new Super Bowl ad: Fire, religion, claimed political corruption and anti-bullying message
Personal injury lawyer Jamie Casino aired a Super Bowl ad last year in his hometown market that captured global attention, racking up some 5.6 million views on the Internet.
So it was perhaps almost inevitable, following the high profile of his earlier effort, that reaction to the Georgia trial attorney’s ad for this year’s Super Bowl was a bit more muted.
Featuring fire, advice from a father figure to a bulllied schoolboy, Bible admonitions, claimed political corruption, a rose dropped into a grave, a sledgehammer-wielding attorney and an American flag flying high above a historic building, among other time-honored icons, Casino’s latest ad had over 33,000 views on YouTube as of Wednesday. “When the wicked rule, the people suffer,” the narrator tells viewers. Although the ad includes a mention of Casino’s law firm on a movie marquee, it does not provide a phone number or make any explicit pitch for legal business.
Among those who liked the attorney’s 2014 effort better was Tom Barton, who said Casino “came up a yard short of the goal line when compared to his stunning Super Bowl ad last year,” in a Tom’s Take blog post published by the Savannah Morning News. Nonetheless, the new ad was visually appealing, told a good story and had “pretty cool” production quality, Barton wrote.
“I think it was a little over the top,” Savannah resident Jayne Beavers told WJCL, citing “the biblical references and the dark angel” in Casino’s latest Super Bowl effort.
“Plotwise, the damn thing is barely coherent, unlike last year’s spot, which was ludicrous but at least easy to follow,” writes reviewer Tim Nudd on the Adfreak page of Adweek. Nonetheless, the writer is already looking forward to next year’s ad, “when Casino fully transforms into Batman.”
It isn’t clear, however, that there will be a sequel to this year’s Super Bowl ad:
“I do enjoy doing commercials and stuff like that but I think I made my point on this issue,” Casino told WJCL.
Although a bit less explicit in an interview with WSAV, Casino again suggested that this year’s Super Bowl ad may be his last. “This was the close a chapter that needed to have more light shed on it,” he said, “because I see change happening but it seems like there’s a lot of the old guard that are still there and I think they need to be held accountable.”
He declined to tell the station how much the ad cost to produce but said last year that he spent less than $100,000 on the 2014 ad, including airtime.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Trial lawyer in viral action-hero Super Bowl ad fought for airtime to vindicate slain brother”
ABAJournal.com: “Georgia Bar president critical of local lawyer’s ‘over the top’ Super Bowl ad”
