In the tradition of “Papa” John and the late Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has cast himself in this year’s Super Bowl commercial for the company’s Alexa voice assistant and Echo speaker.
Watch Jeff Bezos in this teaser for Amazon’s Alexa Super Bowl commercial
Alexa, from stranger to star.
In a teaser posted to YouTube, Amazon asks: “Sounds like Alexa might have lost her voice, but who could possibly replace her?” It looks fun!
What’s interesting is that it’s only been two years since Alexa and the Echo was still an odd, niche, sleeper-hit device — beloved by early adopters and then introduced to the masses in this 2016 Super Bowl commercial starring Alec Baldwin, Dan Marino, Jason Schwartzman and Missy Elliot:
Now Alexa is part of mainstream culture — a real hit, and a real chance for Amazon to play an unexpectedly large role in the future of voice computing. Two Super Bowls later, she needs no introduction.
(And as Amazon has dominated business news headlines with its acquisition of Whole Foods and attention-grabbing HQ2 hunt, Bezos — now the world’s richest person, and No. 1 on the Recode 100 — likely needs no introduction, either.)
Worth noting: The commercial stars Stephanie Allynne, whose wife is Tig Notaro, whose beloved show “One Mississippi” was just canceled by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon. Awkward.
Also worth noting: This isn’t Bezos’s first TV commercial rodeo. As Bloomberg’s Nick Turner reminds us, he also played himself in a Taco Bell spot in 2001:
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
