Psy Gets Top Nut Job with 30-Second Super Bowl Spot

In his first major US commercial deal Korean rapper Psy will be featured in a 30-second Super Bowl spot for Wonderful Pistachios, the nation’s leading snack nut brand.

The spot is a testament to both Psy’s image as a zany, high-energy performer and the virtually universal appeal of the “Gangnam Style” music video which has garnered 1.16 billion YouTube views as of Thursday morning.

As further testament to the chubby rapper’s infectious appeal, Wonderful Pistachios scrapped its original plan to feature Psy in just one of its two 15-second Super Bowl spots in favor of a having him star in a single 30-second spot.

“We decided that it needed and deserved 30 seconds,” said Marc Seguin, VP of marketing for the brand’s parent Paramount Farms.

The Psy-featured commercial is directed by Grammy Award-winning Mathew Cullen. It’s the culmination of a 4-year $100 million marketing campaign by Paramount Farms to make Wonderful Pistachio’s “Get Crackin‘” slogan ubiquitous in markets and sundry goods stores.

Psy’s association with the fast-growing brand will likely continue long after the Super Bowl game is in the football history books. His spot will continue to air on cable channels and primetime TV and will be featured in the brand’s Get Crackin’ website and YouTube channel. Paramount also plans to release footage from the commercial shoot online.

On Wednesday the brand launched a pre-Super Bowl Facebook sweepstakes inviting fans to upload a picture of how they “Get Crackin’ Gangnam Style” to earn a chance to win a 12-month lease of a 2013 Mercedes Benz SLK 250, which happens to be what Psy drives. It is also inviting YouTube stars to create parodies of the Psy spot after it has aired on Super Bowl.

Beyond media outlets, Wonderful Pistachios is planning various events around the Psy Gangnam Style spot, including a major event in New Orleans around the time of the Super Bowl. It will also feature free-standing displays in about 50,000 stores which are likely to bring consumers face to face with Psy again.

Paramount Farms has invested heavily in marketing to turn Wonderful Pistachios into a case study on record-setting brand growth. In just five years since its launch, the brand has become the world’s no. 1 snack nut brand, with annual sales of around $400 million and an average annual growth rate of 20-30%. The brand’s goal is to break into the world’s top-10 snack brands in a $12-bil. category traditionally dominated by Frito-Lay brands.

Psy aka Park Jae-sang, 34, was unquestionably the biggest pop sensation of 2012, with appearances on virtually every major US talk show and featured performances on the European and American Music Awards as well as the Christmas in Washington and the Dick Clark Rockin’ New Year TV specials.

Psy is well poised to continue to be the leading global pop sensation into 2013 with a Korean-English single scheduled for February release and an album in March for which he has promised more catchy dance moves like the horse-riding dance that will likely define the year 2012 in future pop culture retrospectives.

A week after the February 3 airing of the Super Bowl spot, Psy will be seen by an audience nearly five times as large when he performs in the CCTV Lunar New Year Special, China’s most-watched TV show with an estimate audience of about 880 million.