Over the last year or so we’ve been watching Ryan Reynolds killing it – not on camera, as an actor, but off-camera, as the head of perhaps one of the most innovative creative agencies in the industry, Maximum Effort. Just last week, I posted about Ryan and Maximum Effort doing all the throwback 70s and 80s-style commercials during the re-enactments of The Facts of Life and Diff’rent Strokes on Live in Front of a Studio Audience. Not even a week later, Ryan and Maximum Effort are going viral once again, this time in association with the Sex and the City sequel series, And Just Like That…

 

I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the whole Peloton thing? As Maria noted in Celebrity Social Media the other day, they put this in the first episode so it’s meant to be spoiled. By now if you’re mad about it because you’ve been waiting to watch it, sorry – the story is everywhere, because it’s not just what happened to Big, it’s also what happened to Peloton, which is that their stock price took a hit.  

So they’re trying to turn it around with a new ad, featuring Big aka Chris Noth, and produced by none other than…yes, them again, Ryan and Maximum Effort:  

 

Was this just an elaborate marketing stunt? Did they intend this all along? Peloton denies knowing in advance how their bike was involved in Big’s storyline but the quick turnaround of this ad kinda undermines that denial now in our conspiracy theory-obsessed culture.  

 

For Ryan Reynolds and Maximum Effort though, no matter what the truth is – a planned stunt or an unintended reaction resulting in this ad – they win, they win again. They’re associated with yet another well-timed, cheeky and irreverent commercial, and it’s actually possible that they put it together in just a couple of days, maybe even less.  

Because the spot itself isn’t complicated. It’s one location, probably a hotel room or similar, low lit, with two bikes set up behind a couch. And we’re not talking intricate cinematography here either. It’s just a couple of close-ups a wide shot reveal at the end, with a voiceover. You can shoot this in a couple of hours. And I’ve no doubt Maximum Effort is fully capable of editing it in a few hours too.  

It’s imagination AND efficiency. Everyone else in the field is now looking at Ryan Reynolds’s marketing firm and trying to do the same.  

So with that in mind, the Commercial Event of the Year is the Super Bowl, exactly two months from today. How many Super Bowl ads with Ryan Reynolds and Maximum Exposure be a part of? Will they get to the point where they have to turn down business because if I’m a brand, they’re my first, second, third, and fourth call.

Attached: Ryan out for a stroll in NYC on December 9.