It seems as simple as moving a few letters around, but a new collaboration between Aflac, the provider of supplemental insurance and Ben Affleck, the actor and director, has been years in the making.
\n\nPairing Aflac, which has thrived with commercials featuring an anthropomorphic duck squawking out its name, and Affleck. the star of “Good Will Hunting,” “Gone Girl” and “Argo,” is an idea that has been in the ether for some time, acknowledges Garth Knutson, the insurer’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer. “This has probably been tens of thousands of peoples’ idea,” he says during a recent interview. “It’s one of those things that people just make as a joke. Even Ben has been joking about it for a long time — maybe he has been a little bit more annoyed in the past.”
\n\nAflac has struck a partnership with Artists Equity, the production studio founded by Affleck, Matt Damon and financier Gerry Cardinale, and their first new work shows up Saturday during ESPN’s “College GameDay,” and, subsequently, in other types of sports programming, including ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” and in connected-TV inventory. In the first new ad, Affleck gets a lesson from popular coaches Nick Saban…
Original source: https://variety.com/v/tv/