The final Blockbuster video store in the United States, located in Bend, Oregon, is planning to run retro-style commercial during the Super Bowl.
The clip won’t play during the Big Game, where TV spots are costing around $7 million for thirty seconds. Rather, it’ll stream on Instagram and in-store during Rihanna’s half-time show in the hopes of catching just some of the attention that will be swirling around online during the Game.
In a post hyping the spot, a nice bit of art is included showing a giant cockroach looming over the store in the middle of a wasted landscape. That post is captioned: “Is the world coming to an end or is Blockbuster releasing its first commercial in a really, really long time? Yes. See you on 2/12.”
Speaking with CNN, she says: “I wanted to do two things with the ad. One was to show that small businesses can also do creative and fun things for Super Bowl, and it’s not just an opportunity for the big companies and their big ads. We also want people to remember us, that we are here and our store is exactly the way a Blockbuster store was in the 1990s.”
At its height, Blockbuster operated more than 9,000 stores nationwide renting movies and video games. The rise of Netflix and other streaming services ended that, the franchise falling to just 10 stores by 2017 and now just one.
The final store has been the subject of both a Netflix documentary and a scripted TV comedy series which premiered and then was quickly cancelled last year.
