Mpls. Company Creates Quirky Arby's Ad

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – There's a new ad about to hit the airwaves that's...unusual.

In fact, it's a giant apology from Arby's to Pepsi.

The whole ad consists of a shot of a pint of Pepsi in a white room.

WCCO's Natalie Nyhus spoke with the Minneapolis-based  ad agency that saved the day after a big mistake.

The commercial starts like this: "Arby's has an agreement to feature their good friend Pepsi in two ads a year. Well, Arby's messed up and forgot about the second commercial."

Have you ever heard an ad so honest?

Minneapolis-based ad agency Fallon was backed into a corner after Arby's unintentionally left Pepsi out of the advertising mix.

"We found ourselves in a bit of a pickle where we needed to sort out how we were going to get their partner Pepsi into one of their spots," Rocky Novak, managing director at Fallon, said.

Instead of shoe-horning a soda/curly fries shot into their already-finished campaign, they decided to show their cards.

"The creative team here thought, why don't we just admit it. Admit that it was a bit of a slip up and be unapologetic about it," Novak said.

So they stripped it down, put the pop on a white background and backed it up with the booming voice of actor Ving Rhames.

Fallon pushed the concept to Arby's executives.

"The next thing you knew, you just heard 10 seconds in you could just hear laughter," he said. "We knew there was something when we got that reaction out of them."

Being that straight-forward is a far cry from Minnesota nice.

"We didn't give it the classic Minnesota passive-aggressive. We were just generally aggressive. We said, we messed up and here's what we are going to do about it," Novak said. "Honesty is the best policy, right?"

The ad won't air all over the country, but you will see it here in Minneapolis starting next week.