Attention boomers, Xers, & millennials:

Do not attempt to adjust your set for 15 seconds on Super Bowl night. That’s when Gen-Z is hacking the broadcast to hype the Feb. 6 launch of Tubi’s new original comedy series, The Z-Suite, starring everyone’s favorite early-aughts mom, Lauren Graham, a.k.a. Lorelai Gilmore..

ADWEEK has your exclusive first look at The Z-Suite’s Super Bowl promo—both the 15-second version playing during the Big Game as well as a 30-second version that may stream during Tubi’s simulcast—which is guaranteed to warp the fragile little minds of anyone born before 1996. And Tubi CMO Nicole Parlapiano says that’s absolutely intentional.

“We wanted to get people going, ‘What the hell did I just watch?’” she remarks with an Eric Cartman-esque grin about the “little hacky spot,” teasing the FAST streamer’s advertising world satire that puts the battle of the generations front and center. “Instead of a traditional promo, we wanted to show the essence of the show.”

Gen-Z’s essence is all over both versions of the promo like Missing Person on cow print fabric. Whether it’s the vertical video dimensions or trendy TikTok Easter eggs like special lenses and an egg crack, Tubi and their creative marketing partners at VaynerMedia set out to hit every generational staple from A to… well, Z.

“It’s breaking the fourth wall,” emphasizes Gary Vaynerchuk, VaynerMedia’s CEO and an executive producer on The Z-Suite. “Personally, I think a lot of the reaction will be, ‘What the f*** was that?’ Which is kind of the point!”

Reality bites

True story: The Z-Suite began its trip to your Tubi screen as a reality show that would have unfolded in the boardrooms and breakout rooms of an actual ad agency. “Initially, we thought, ‘What if we went to a young company where the Gen-Z’s take over the C-suite?” Parlapiano recalls.

But the Tubi development team quickly realized the real limitations of going the reality route, starting with the challenge of finding an agency willing to upend their status quo. “For management to take that gamble, it would have to feel real and not rehearsed,” Parlapiano notes. “Reality viewers have gotten so smart these days—they can tell when things are overproduced, and they don’t like it.”

So The Z-Suite pivoted into the narrative realm, with actress/producer Katie O’Brien taking the reins as creator and showrunner and Graham recruited to executive produce and star as Monica Frazier, the Type-A Gen-X head of the fictional Atelier Ad Agency. Along with her right-hand man, Doug (Nico Santos), Monica runs a tight, profitable ship, but not everyone is on board with her captaincy.

Specifically, the agency’s twentysomething social team—led by the ambitious and Instagram-proficient Kriska (Madison Shamoun)—is eager to make its mark on Atelier’s culture and clients. And they get their chance when Monica and Doug botch a major ad campaign, leading the agency’s wealthy bankroller to institute a regime change that leaves Kriska and her friends holding corner offices… and the corporate card.

While no one would confuse The Z-Suite’s heightened version of the ad industry with reality, the show does mix real brands and personalities—Yahoo News and Olivia Rodrigo are both namechecked in the series premiere, for example—into workplace shenanigans reminiscent of The Office and 30 Rock.

“I am curious to see how it lands with the ad trade audience,” muses Parlapiano, whose pre-Tube career included a stint at VaynerMedia. “It doesn’t remind me of my day-to-day life when I was on the agency side! Some of the stuff we’re doing is very inside baseball, but it’s inside baseball to the community that gets it.”

Generation why?

The aspect of the show that should resonate most with audiences—both in and outside of the advertising world—is the battle of the generations playing out in offices (and on Zoom calls) around the country. Both Parlapiano and Vaynerchuk admit that they’ve run into the occasional “silly episode” with their younger employees over such workplace issues as remote vs. in-office requirements and timelines for career advancement.

Overall, though, they think the kids are pretty much all right. “I think we have it pretty good,” Vaynerchuk says of the day-to-day culture at VaynerMedia. “I have a lot of empathy for Gen-Z; they came up in a different workplace environment… and I think the show captures that.”  

“My experience with Gen-Z has been nothing but great,” Parlapiano echoes, emphasizing that the portrayals of Kriska and her cohorts are deliberately exaggerated. “To be honest, I’ve had millennial [employees] that are just as bad as some of those characters! So I don’t think those problems are generational.”

You might say that The Z-Suite’s Super Bowl promo is Tubi’s way of giving back to Gen-Z for all the gags at their expense. “The idea was to use the biggest stage in America to suggest that younger kids have taken over your Super Bowl,” the Tubi CMO explains. “It’s interesting to play with those tensions and really go for it in this campaign.”

Game plan

Of course, the “go for it” approach can sometimes backfire, resulting in ads that enter the Super Bowl Hall of Infamy with viewers of all generations. But Parlapiano and Vaynerchuk both insist that they’ll be equally proud to see The Z-Suite’s Big Game promo ranking high on either best or worst lists.

“If no one’s talking about it, that’s a miss,” Parlapiano observes. “If people hate it and talk about how lame it is, at least they’re talking about it.”

For Vaynerchuk, the promo’s success won’t be measured on Super Bowl night but instead by The Z-Suite’s streaming numbers on Tubi.

“Even if it was everyone’s No. 1 promo, won 10 awards, and led to 45 new clients, if nobody watched the show, I would be embarrassed and devastated,” he says. “I’m looking at the business impact—not whether someone said that it stunk or that it was great.”

Not caring what other people think? That’s so Gen-Z.