• by Aaron Baar , January 31, 2017

For all the benefits of in-home WiFi, consumers are often frustrated with dead spots and slower-than-expected speeds. Cox Communications believes it has a better solution, and it’s using a big platform to show it off. 

The regional cable company will use a regional Super Bowl spot this weekend to launch its Panoramic WiFi service in San Diego. “We know 45% of consumers have WiFi that they’re unhappy with,” Gaston Vaneri, senior vice president of brand for Cox, tells Marketing Daily. “The majority of them said they would switch if the new prove gave them the internet that they expected.”

The spot, from agency Doner, portrays an acrobatic family passing a device from person-to-person and room-to-room. A mom on a patio tosses a tablet to her husband, who catches it in a frying pan and flips it to a child running through the hallways, who passes it to a sister doing a handstand, who gives it to a dog, who takes it upstairs, where the tablet eventually winds up in the mom’s hands again on a patio. Then, the whole spot runs again in reverse to reinforce the point. 

“Consumers know what bad WiFi is. What we have to do is make them believe we can make it better,” Vaneri says. “If they see that it works, then they’ll be convinced.”

The idea to run the spot in reverse came from director Joseph Kahn, he says. Kahn pitched the idea early in the process and then worked with the agency and actors to bring it to life. The actors rehearsed and filmed the sequence both backward and forwards (there are subtle differences in the two versions) to make it more authentic, he says. “It turned the ad from being interesting into something unique,” he says. “It also gives us the opportunity to walk through the whole product twice.”

Initially, the spot will run in minute-long segments showing the full backward and forwards sequences together. Eventually, it will be broken up into separate 30-second sequences, Vaneri says. 

The Panoramic WiFi product is launching first in San Diego, where it is also being supported by print, digital and out-of-home advertising. It will roll into other markets (as will the campaign) throughout the year, he adds.