Jackson Hole outfitter Adam Lackner leads epic outdoor wildlife tours in five countries around the world. Whatever you want to see, he’s probably got a tour that has it. If he doesn’t, then it’s probably coming soon.
The most popular of his tours by far, however, are the ones he leads in Wyoming at Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. And so, when Google came calling on his business, BrushBuck Wildlife Tours, to do a Super Bowl ad in Wyoming, it was no surprise to Lackner that it was Yellowstone and Grand Teton that had drawn their attention.
“Everyone always has a great time on a Yellowstone tour,” Lackner told Cowboy State Daily. “Even if it’s their second, third or fourth visit.”
Google knew of Lackner because he’d represented Wyoming in 2017, when Google was inviting businesses to its campus to show off new products. For that, they invited a business from every state, and they did much the same with their Super Bowl ads, filming with a different business in all 50 states.
The national endeavor took five different film crews to accomplish in what was a short timeframe to make the Super Bowl ad deadline.
The 30-second ad spots then aired in the television viewing area for each state — geographically targeted advertising.
Behind The Scenes With Google
Wyoming’s 30-second Google ad spot took an entire week to film and included a film crew of 10 people.
Lackner, who lives in Victor, Idaho, was pleasantly surprised to discover that his location was included in the Wyoming viewing region. That meant he got to see the commercial spot that featured his business during the Super Bowl.
“They slowed my voice down to make the narration sound better,” Lackner said. “And they pieced together some of my words, but you couldn’t tell they’d done that. It sounded great. They really know what they’re doing.”
The commercial spot opened with a shot over the clouded Tetons, before quickly cutting to a bighorn sheep, sitting very still in the snow, just, you know, chilling.
But, Lackner added, that’s not how the bighorn sheep were behaving most of the time during that particular filming excursion, which took place up near Gardiner, Montana.
In fact, the sheep’s antics kind of stole the show, Lackner said, even over the ever-popular moose doing head butts, wolves swishing tails around in the snow, and bison standing firm in the brutal Wyoming wind as they munched on slushies made of snow and grass.
“The sheep gave us a fantastic show,” Lackner said. “They were doing some rutting action and kind of butting heads. We watched them until we ran out of light.”
On another day, Lackner took the film crew out to Jackson Lake to watch the sun set.
“They filmed the lake as it was icing over and the sun was setting,” Lackner said. “We were there on the Jackson Lake Dam filming the Tetons in the Jackson Lake for at least an hour.”
In the ad spot, Wyoming wildlife and landscape shots are interlaced with information about Google with footage that shows how BrushBuck Wildlife Tours’ uses Google in its business every day.
“We do use Google a lot in our business,” Lackner said. “We put a lot of our videos up on YouTube, which is part of the Google ecosystem, and I use Google Spreadsheets and my staff, who are in five different states, we log onto Zoom and get to work.”
A lot of the day-to-day work happens throughout the Google ecosystem, Lackner added, ranging from documents and spreadsheets to other tools, including the new, Gemini AI.
The Full Wyoming Experience
While most of the Google crew’s time was devoted to filming for the ad spot, Lackner and his team had one other unofficial task on their agenda. That was just ensuring that the Google team had an epic time while they were in Wyoming.
That meant evening trips to places like the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson after filming was done for the day.
“You know, Wyoming and whiskey go together like a hand in a glove,” Lackner said, with a chuckle. “We had to give them the full Wyoming experience.”
There was also a trip to Gather, which is a popular restaurant and bar, and several other of the must-see places in Jackson and Teton County.
Of course, a big part of any Jackson Hole experience is just getting to see the iconic Tetons in all their wintry splendor —although that can be hit and miss sometimes, with all the mist and fog that tends to surround them.
“There were three days where you could barely see the Tetons at all,” Lackner said. “But then they finally blew off, and they got some great footage of the sun setting on the Tetons.”
The snow was also about right for a winter-time film exercise, Lackner added. That, too, could have been hit and miss during the timeframe the film crew was in Wyoming.
“The wildlife did what it does, which was great, and the scenery was great, and the weather was generally good,” Lackner said. “The days were a little long because we were out doing stuff allday. But everything was good.”
It was perfectly Wyoming, something that shines through the ad, Lackner believes, and is what he likes best about the whole thing.
“So far, we’ve gotten great feedback from the spot, and it was fun to be part of it,” Lackner said. “And that’s why we wanted to do it. We weren’t looking for a home run, we were just glad to be part of it, because it’s not every day you get asked to be in a Super Bowl commercial.”
Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
