Local co. buys Super Bowl commercial

AUSTIN (KXAN) - A classic road-trip comedy - National Lampoon's Vacation - is the inspiration for an Austin-based company’s first television ad.

The commercial will run on the biggest advertising day of the year: Super Bowl Sunday. Home Away , an online vacation home rental company, is pulling out all of the stops.

“The reason we did it is because it is very tough to break through in the Super Bowl, and if you have a big hit it can really work very hard for you,” said Home Away CEO Brian Sharples. “We felt we needed a story in the company that was bigger than the ad itself.”

Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo reprise their roles as the Griswolds in the 30-second spot to air during the third quarter. It will be a movie trailer of sorts, pushing viewers to Home Away’s Web site where there will be a 15-minute web movie, a game starring the famous “truckster”, and behind-the-scenes bloopers.

"The event on the Internet is just as big, or bigger than the Super Bowl itself," said Sharples.

Sharples is not saying how much the Super Bowl ad cost, but Home Away is spending 20 percent of its marketing budget on this entire venture.

“In this day and age, I don’t believe you can ever get a return from just the Super Bowl ad itself,” said Sharples. “You really have to then capture people attention, drive them to the internet, social networking to spark that conversation.”

It cost over $1 million alone to gear up for 5 million visits to their Web site in a five-minute time period.

UT advertising professor Gary Wilcox said lower prices for Super Bowl ads in 2010 are opening the doors for smaller companies to play in a big arena. Several big companies, like Pepsi, are also scaling back their advertising during the game.

"One of the criticisms of advertising has always been from an economic point of view it creates barriers of interest,” said Wilcox. “So the little guy can’t play with the big guy."

Click here for an interactive Top 25 Memorable Superbowl commericals.