How VML Re-Created Iconic Rom-Com Moment For Hellmann’s Big Game Ad

At Super Bowl LIX, Hellmann’s reunited the stars of cult-classic rom-com ‘When Harry Met Sally…’, recreating the famous orgasm scene in Katz’s Deli – with a cameo from actor Sydney Sweeney.

Created by agency VML New York and directed by Caviar’s Jake Szymanski, the film features Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal enjoying  – or rather, not enjoying – a sandwich in the icon New York eatery. That is, until a squirt of Hellmann’s mayo livens up their lunch.

To find out how the agency made this recreation of a beloved movie scene possible, LBB’s Ben Conway caught up with the VML creatives behind the spot; executive creative director, Susan Golkin, and creative directors Dani Karnik and Pat Walsh.

LBB> When did you start thinking about the Super Bowl spot and getting to work on this?

Susan> We get March off, basically, let's put it that way. So you go through February, ride out the Super Bowl and whatever post[-Super Bowl] stuff you have planned, you get March off, and then in April, we start thinking about the brief. By May, we brief it in. So it's almost a year's process.

Pat> This is my first Super Bowl experience, and being briefed when we did get briefed, I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? It's going to take this much time?’. But once you get into it, it's kind of remarkable. The experience delivers on the amount of time necessary to do it. 

LBB> So what was the brief this time around? And what were the initial ideas that came from that? 

Susan> It was a big shift this year for us. Typically, it's been more of a purpose brief for the Super Bowl – we've gone after food waste; using the leftovers in the fridge. This year it was decided that there would be a bit of a shift in that. 30 seconds is a short amount of time, and the leftover story is a more challenging story to tell in 30 seconds. So there was a decision this year to really push Hellmann’s into superiority – into what the brand does, versus what it stands for. 

So the shift became sandwiches. And I will say, it was a pretty nice unlock: ‘Hellmann’s makes the sandwich’, ‘It's not a sandwich without Hellmann’s’... There were a couple different phrasings of that line, but it was really about Hellmann’s bringing out the taste of the sandwich. And I think that was a great unlock for the teams, because the work was simpler this year in a really good way.

LBB> Pat and Dani, what were your reactions to that idea? Were you then thinking of famous franchises with sandwiches involved that could tie into this?

Dani> We tried various things but it was really exciting to do something simpler. We could go broader and have a little bit more fun with it, as we didn't have as much of a purpose message to land. We had a bunch of other ideas but this was one was just one we had to do. I felt compelled to write this and present it to Susan… It was almost compulsory in my brain.

LBB> How did that ‘When Harry Met Sally’ idea develop, and how did you go about securing the rights to involve the IP, and get the original cast involved?

Susan> This one was definitely a perfect storm. It was the first idea we presented in the meeting and they bought it pretty immediately. But then that's a little frightening, because now you’ve sold something they love and it's: ‘Oh my God, what if we can't get it?’. 

We first started by getting Warner Brothers rights, then we had to get Meg [Ryan] and Billy [Crystal] in. We even consulted [director/writer] Rob Reiner on lensing. Then Fox had to approve, obviously. So there were a lot of approvals along the way, and each one was like a giant checkmark. Meg Ryan said to us on set, ‘I honestly can't believe you pulled it off’. I think each time anything's ever come up, there's always been somebody who’s said no.

LBB> How exciting was it to then write for an iconic IP and delve into that world and revisit that really famous scene?

Dani> It was a dream. This is my favourite movie. I re-watch it every New Year's Day. So having worked on Hellmann’s, I had picked up on the fact that there's a sandwich scene here – I’ve used that case in a few of my presentations.

The idea of taking something so iconic and being able to recreate it was insane. It didn't feel real, and sometimes it doesn't feel real now. Whoa. It's actually happening. We actually did it. This is crazy. So every step of the way it was just shocking, every time it kept going further and becoming [more] real.

Pat> One of the biggest rewards is coming up with this concept, and then handing it over to these two masters [Meg and Billy]. It's a bit out of your hands, in a way. Dani and I were writing all this dialogue and backup lines, hoping these heroes of ours say one or two of these things we’ve written verbatim. And that did happen! The coolest thing is that they really said it, and read it the way we wanted.

Susan> It was amazing how they got into character immediately. They entered as Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal but within five seconds, it was Harry and Sally. They hadn't played these roles in 35 years, until they sat down and he was Harry and she was Sally.

LBB> I’m picturing a Clark Kent-Superman transformation moment when Billy put on that sweater!

Susan> Yeah! It's amazing how much people know about the movie too. This movie is however many years old, and you think people are going to forget details, but it's been amazing. The sweater; people went crazy, the way Sally orders; people remembered. In all the comments people are throwing out lines like ‘pecan pie’, ‘baby fish mouth’. People seem to remember so much! 

And it's not just those of us that were alive when the movie came out. A lot of people have talked about whether Gen Z knows this. We had to test that, and we learned that Gen Z knew the movie – and if they don't know the movie, they all know the scene. They look at it with almost the same nostalgia that we do. 

We have a young writer on our team who said that the movie is so popular amongst her and her friends because dating life is digital now. They look at movies like this and say, ‘Oh my God, that's how people met? People set people up and went to dinner parties and met someone?’. So it’s sort of different for every generation, but it's nice how it all works. 

LBB> How does that Gen Z element roll into the Sydney Sweeney moment?

Dani> When we were talking to directors and writing the script, we left that role as ‘cameo’. But Jake [Szymanski, director] was talking about how giving it to a younger rom-com celebrity would make it seem full circle. I thought that was really smart. So bringing in Sydney Sweeney just made sense because she's really popular, she had a rom-com movie come out last year, and when she's on screen there’s no looking away, because it's Sydney Sweeney. So that was awesome. Even on set, she was really cool.

LBB> Were you all on set? What was that like?

Susan> We actually shot at Katz's [Deli], which was amazing. That was definitely paying a certain amount of respect and homage to the scene and what it means. If we weren't in Katz's, I think people would go crazy. We shot at the actual table and there was a guy who worked there who was there the day they shot the original scene. There's a lot of history in that room!

LBB> Was it a challenge to shoot there? Katz’s is such a popular business all day, every day, was it difficult to get that space to shoot in?

Dani> Everyone was knocking on the door, and when they found out it was actually closed for a shoot, they were so disappointed. There's always such a long line outside of Katz’s, and when they found out that they couldn't get that sandwich, they were really not happy.

Pat> Yeah, you could have cut a highlight reel of disappointment throughout the day. Every time you stepped outside, it would be like, ‘I'm here from Japan!’.

Susan> Katz’s was amazing. They are so part of the history of the scene that they were very happy to be involved in this recreation. 

LBB> Looking back at the whole creative and production process now the spot has aired, what would you say was the biggest challenge you had to overcome?

Dani> I think the biggest challenge was to not mess it up! We had one of the most iconic scenes in rom-com history, and if we did it disrespectfully or messed it up, people would call us out. So to take something so good and keep it in that realm was one of the bigger challenges.

We wrote dialogue for six months to make sure that whatever we had on the day was the funniest it could possibly be. That was pretty challenging because you're not just writing for a character in a commercial, you're writing for Billy Crystal, one of the funniest people, and to be able to write words that go in his mouth that make him laugh was wonderful.

Above: 'Waitress' Teaser Film

Susan> For me, the biggest fear – some of which went away because we did rounds and rounds of testing – was will people reject it? Here, you had this perfect scene, this perfect movie, and now we're turning it into an ad. A lot of times, fans get mad when brands enter the conversation or touch these properties. 

We really did speak to pretty much everyone alive who was attached to this movie throughout the process. Warner Brothers said yes. Meg said yes. Billy said yes. We had a conversation with Rob Reiner at some point about his feelings about this to make sure that we weren't doing anything that people would say, ‘Oh my God. How could you do that to that movie and that scene?’. 

It is such a relief and overwhelmingly exciting to see that people are so happy to see them together again. The story is so simple and the brand fits in pretty seamlessly so  we don't seem to be getting that rejection.

LBB> Does this simpler approach, with less of a focus on purpose, set up a new direction in general for the brand platform going forward?

Susan> Yeah, this brand superiority idea and [exploring] how America is typically using Hellmann’s… You're going to see more like that, where we talk about how people use it in real life, versus how people use it to save the planet or to save food. That doesn't go away – that’s still Hellmann’s at its core, and it's still a wonderful purpose. But I think we're talking more into the functional uses for the day-to-day mayo user. Because it’s good! A dry sandwich is a bad sandwich!