H-E-B celebrates Texas pride in Super Bowl ad

A look at H-E-B's new Super Bowl ad. A look at H-E-B's new Super Bowl ad. Photo: Courtesy H-E-B Photo: Courtesy H-E-B Image 1 of / 45 Caption Close H-E-B celebrates Texas pride in Super Bowl ad 1 / 45 Back to Gallery

H-E-B is trying to drum up Texas pride in a new commercial and #TrueTexan Twitter campaign that will launch during the Super Bowl.

The 60-second commercial, narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Billy Bob Thornton, shares the recipe for “how to make a Texas,” opening with a shot of a ranch and quickly cutting to a driver in a cowboy hat climbing into an H-E-B delivery truck at day break.

“So you want to make a Texas. The recipe starts with these ingredients: 269,000 square miles, a quarter million farms, 10,000 some odd ranches, lots of coast line, lakes by the handful, good dirt, clear water, corn, cattle and all the sky you can handle,” Thornton says as familiar scenes from the state play out in the background. It closes with the H-E-B truck driving toward the horizon on a road along a farm.

The commercial will air on Texas stations between the game’s third and fourth quarters in 11 of the 210 national advertising markets, including San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi, Laredo, McAllen, Midland, Houston, Rio Grande City and Waco, said Cory Basso, H-E-B’s vice president of marketing and advertising.

The company expects three million Texas households to see the commercial, with more than seven million viewers overall. It is promoting a Twitter hashtag, #TrueTexan, as part of the campaign.

H-E-B has aired commercials for several past Super Bowl games. Basso said he expects this year’s ad to contrast with humorous ones that are common during the Super Bowl.

“This is the first year we really went a little bit more serious, a little more pulling at the heartstrings,” he said. “And I think that’s good for this season — there’s so much noise on TV right now with all the politics... We thought it was nice to take a step back.”

Basso wouldn’t say how much it cost to produce or air the commercial. He said it was “nowhere close” to the $5 million cost of 30 seconds of national airtime during the Super Bowl.

The commercial was shot “literally all over the state,” Basso said, including at a ranch outside San Antonio and a fire station and a quinceañera celebration in Austin. It will also air during the Academy Awards and other prominent television events as well as the season finales of selected television shows, he said.

The commercial was directed by Chris Smith of the Dallas-based Sugar Film Production.

rwebner@express-news.net

@rwebner