• by Aaron Baar , February 1, 2016

LG Electronics will bring a little future to the present during the upcoming Super Bowl with a spot featuring that actor with a particular set of skills, Liam Neeson. 

The spot touts the company’s new Signature OLED TV, which features a “Picture-on-Glass” design. The spot is the brand’s first appearance on the Super Bowl. “As the most-watched televised event of the year, the Super Bowl is the perfect stage to unveil a new TV technology that will radically change the home viewing experience,” David VanderWaal, vice president of marketing for LG Electronics USA, tells Marketing Daily. 

The spot, produced by Ridley Scott (who directed Apple’s Iconic “1984” spot) and directed by his son Jake (who directed last year’s “Lost Dog” commercial for Budweiser), portrays Neeson as a mysterious “man from the future,” out to share the future of television technology to the masses of today. In the commercial, Neeson addresses a young man at a bar: “There is a revolution coming,” he says, explaining that the future is staring back at the past “like a perfect picture on glass.” The scene shifts to the young man in a futuristic setting of black offset by Neon lights. “It will change everything,” Neeson says in voiceover. “That’s why they want to stop it.” The young man is pursued on foot and by motorcycle by mysterious followers before opening a briefcase of color, signifying the OLED-technology. 

“[The commercial] draws on the undying desire for consumers to discover the next best thing in home entertainment technology and emphasizes how precious it can be when it’s finally found,” VanderWaal says. “The commercial and release of LG Signature OLED TV is an official stake in the ground that OLED technology is the future of TV — and [it] is available now thanks to LG.”

In advance of the game, LG is holding a Twitter sweepstakes to win one of the televisions, posting mysterious questions about the commercial with the hashtag #ManFromTheFuture. The idea, VanderWaal says, is have the commercial “be one of many moments where the commercial becomes a conversation.”

“Culturally, the Super Bowl expands way beyond just game day, especially when you consider all the ways people communicate today,” he says. “By releasing information in advance of the game itself, we’re able to engage with consumers on a deeper level, giving them the share-able content on the social channels they use every day.”