Few people across the country knew that the Michigan State hockey program would be making a cameo in Chevrolet’s latest television commercial highlighting the Silverado lineup of pickup trucks.
Scot Schlesinger was one of the shortlisted. And the only one in his office in Michigan State.
The one-minute ad, which began airing Sunday during an NFL conference championship game, features the return of Walter, a cat who acts like a dog. One scene is set in an ice pool, where Walter and his owner are playing hockey. As the camera cuts to a close-up of the owner, he’s wearing a Michigan State hockey jersey.
The performance came together, said Schlesinger, because of his long history of working with General Motors on behalf of the State of Michigan.
“Some of my contacts at GM called me and said they were shooting a winter themed commercial, and they were going to have the pool hockey part of it,” said Schlesinger, associate director of sales and athletics. marketing. “They asked me if we’d be willing to join them. We value our partnership with GM. It’s an amazing organization and we’re really excited to be their partner, so I immediately said, ‘Yeah, we’ll do that. It’s great to do that.’ “
Schlesinger played for the Spartan football program from 1991 to 1995, and has spent nearly 20 years in the athletics department. In August 2015, he was appointed director of the department’s corporate relations. Those connections paved the way for Sunday’s extra MSU exposure.
After GM contacted, Schlesinger shipped Michigan State hockey jerseys to the West Coast, where the ad was filmed.
This isn’t the first time Michigan State athletics has been featured in a commercial. A decade ago, soccer teams had a small place in Comcast/Xfinity commercials.
Nothing compares to Sunday in terms of prestige.
“Ratings for NFL games are very high,” said Schlesinger. “Those are some of the most watched programming, basically, in television history. There’s a lot of interesting football.”
Michigan State hockey coach Danton Cole didn’t watch AFC or NFC title games.
But he caught the ad.
“My phone kind of exploded (Sunday) night, everyone from family and friends to alumni,” said Cole, who is in his fifth season mentoring Spartans. “That’s kind of cool.”
While he’s not aware of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into his program for a role in a national TV commercial, Cole says he knows it has to do with the “good relationship” the school has built with its corporate partners.
“(It was) a small product placement,” Cole said. “So it’s real, it’s great to see.”
Schlesinger had seen it long before Sunday. He did a previous commercial screening in early January. After that, he went to work. Since Nike and the Big Ten Conference also have their logos on the Michigan State jersey, Schlesinger should check it out with multinational clothing titans and leagues. If one objected to their logo being used in the ad, the changes would follow — that is, trying to remove their logo from the jersey.
“But fortunately we didn’t have to go down that path,” said Schlesinger, “or consider those alternatives.”
Although he had seen the commercial several times before its national TV release, Schlesinger admitted he was desperate for the ad to finally run. And while he knew it would come at some point, he said both GM and the TV broadcast partner that brought the game told him exactly which commercial break would mark his debut.
“I’m just waiting to see it,” he said. “It was interesting when it came out.”
He was as enthusiastic as the response he saw to the inclusion of the State of Michigan in the ad.
“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback here about it,” said Schlesinger. “That must have been seen by a lot of people.”
Some of those compliments have also been made face-to-face, since Schlesinger has vowed secrecy.
“No one else in the department knew it happened. I kept it a secret,” said Schlesinger. “GM didn’t want to release exactly what it was, so not a lot of people knew it was coming. But people were pretty excited to see it and excited about it.”
Since Sunday, Schlesinger said he’s been back and watched the ad several times. (Chevrolet posted the ad on its official YouTube page Sunday.) Viewers don’t have to go to the internet to continue viewing it. Schlesinger noted that the advert will run throughout the upcoming Winter Olympics, which begin Friday. So for the foreseeable future, the entire state will regularly see the Michigan State hockey team grace their TV screens during commercial breaks. Some of the alumni who are now GM executives, says Schlesinger, are very happy.
But that will never happen without continually cultivating partnerships.
“It’s just relationship driven,” says Schlesinger. “We have been in a relationship with this corporate partner for a very long period of time. It works.”
Contact Ryan Black at rblack@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @RyanABlack.