In a quiet office at a company called Felcher & Sons, a football linebacker is hired to help productivity. He tackles employees who take long breaks, play solitaire or forget their TPS reports, and he does it in front of his stunned coworkers.
The character, Terry Tate, was played by Lester Speight. The commercials were created by Peter Arnell and the Arnell Group for Reebok and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, who had made a short film pilot of the idea in 2000. Reebok produced six episodes between August and December 2002, and the character first appeared in the Super Bowl XXXVII broadcast in 2003.
The spot aired nationally only once, but people went looking for it. According to Wikipedia, the short was downloaded more than seven million times from Reebok’s website, which made it one of the first viral video campaigns, years before YouTube existed. Reebok made additional episodes afterward, including “Sensitivity Training” in 2004.
It had one weakness: in a poll cited on Wikipedia, only 55 percent of respondents realized the ad was for Reebok. It shows that a very funny ad can be remembered while the brand behind it is forgotten.
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