Paramount+ and Droga5 turned Sylvester Stallone and his daughters into a Super Bowl commercial landmark, scaling the brand's Mountain of Entertainment platform
ARCHIVEParamount+ Puts Sylvester Stallone on the Mountain for the Big Game
Paramount+'s 2023 Big Game commercial, titled "A Mountain of Entertainment | Stallone Face," is a 60-second film created by Droga5 New York in which Sylvester Stallone and his daughters Sophia, Scarlet, and Sistine attempt to scale a version of Paramount Mountain carved in Stallone's likeness, joined by characters from across the platform's content catalogue.
The spot aired in the United States in February 2023, extending the "A Mountain of Entertainment" brand platform that Paramount+ had been developing since its domestic launch in March 2021, as documented by adsoftheworld.com. That platform positions the Paramount Mountain — rebuilt from the company's historic emblem, according to transformmagazine.net — as a visual shorthand for the breadth and heritage of the streamer's film and television library. "Stallone Face" represents the third major expression of the campaign, following installments that first appeared during the 2021 Super Bowl, per musebyclios.com.
The campaign's core objective is brand awareness. Domenic DiMeglio, EVP, CMO, and Head of Marketing and Data at Paramount+, stated publicly that the "Mountain of Entertainment" platform had been "a huge driver" of awareness for the service, as reported by Ad Age in its coverage of the spot on February 3, 2023. By anchoring the 2023 Super Bowl commercial to Sylvester Stallone — one of the most recognisable figures in American popular culture — and surrounding him with characters spanning Dora the Explorer, Captain Pike, Ensign Mariner, Lieutenant Dangle, and Beavis and Butt-Head, Paramount+ communicates catalogue breadth through spectacle rather than enumeration. The United States Super Bowl remains the single highest-reach advertising environment in American television, making it the natural stage for a platform-defining creative statement. Clapboard Score: 79/100.
ARCHIVEParamount+ operates in a fiercely contested United States streaming market. The service reported 63 million subscribers at the end of Q3 2023, adding 2.7 million during that quarter and recording 61 percent year-over-year revenue growth, according to cordcutting.com. Those figures place it in a structurally different tier from its two dominant competitors: Netflix carried nearly 250 million subscribers around the same period, per thedirect.com, while Disney's combined direct-to-consumer portfolio across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ totalled 225 million subscribers at the end of Q3 2023, also according to thedirect.com. For Paramount+, the awareness challenge in the United States is acute — the platform must work harder and more memorably than either rival to occupy a distinct position in a crowded consideration set.
The strategic answer Droga5 and Paramount+ arrived at is consistency of platform rather than campaign-by-campaign reinvention. The "A Mountain of Entertainment" positioning, developed with input from design agency Loyal Kaspar beginning in late 2020 according to transformmagazine.net, gives the brand a durable visual and verbal identity that compounds across successive Super Bowl appearances. Each year, the mountain metaphor absorbs new talent and IP without requiring audiences to learn a new brand idea. Sylvester Stallone functions here not merely as celebrity endorsement but as IP himself — a figure whose filmography spans decades of Paramount releases and whose presence implies both legacy and scale. The creative insight is that awareness of catalogue breadth is best demonstrated through a character who is himself a mountain of entertainment history, making the literal and figurative meanings of the campaign title work simultaneously.
David Shane directed "Stallone Face" for production company O Positive. Shane brought a comedy-inflected visual style to a concept that required both physical spectacle — a mountain face carved in Stallone's likeness — and the integration of animated and live-action characters within a single coherent world. The production was shot with Jeff Kim serving as Director of Photography and Joe Cooney as Production Designer, according to shortyawards.com, both of whom contributed to the spot's ability to render the absurdist premise with enough production weight to hold a Super Bowl audience's attention across 60 seconds.
At the agency, Scott Bell served as Chief Creative Officer at Droga5, with Dan Kelly as Executive Creative Director. The creative team included Gonzalo Navarro as Senior Creative Director, Sean Buckhorn as Senior Copywriter, Alli Walker as Copywriter, and Luke Johnson as Art Director, as documented by shortyawards.com and musebyclios.com. The casting of Stallone's actual daughters — Sophia, Scarlet, and Sistine — as his climbing companions adds a layer of biographical authenticity that softens the inherent absurdity of the premise and invites audiences into a shared joke rather than a performed one. The inclusion of Beavis and Butt-Head alongside Dora the Explorer and Star Trek's Captain Pike is a deliberate demonstration of range: the brand's catalogue contains properties for every demographic cohort in the United States, and the spot's ensemble communicates that without resorting to a title card or voiceover list. The mountain conceit does the cataloguing work invisibly, letting character recognition carry the strategic message.
Verified performance data for "Stallone Face" places the campaign's reach well into nine figures. CreatorIQ reported 105.0 million impressions for Paramount+'s broader Super Bowl campaign effort. On social platforms, Sylvester Stallone's own Instagram promotion of the spot generated 909,000 views and 132,400 engagements, according to CreatorIQ data cited in the Shorty Awards case study for the campaign. On X, the Shorty Awards case study further reports 63,678 impressions, 1,316 engagements, and 353,539 potential reach attributed to the campaign's activity on that platform.
No verified award wins for the "Stallone Face" execution specifically have been recorded across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, or the Webby Awards, as noted in Clapboard's editorial research. Earlier installments of the "Mountain of Entertainment" platform did receive Clio Awards recognition, per musebyclios.com, establishing that the creative platform itself carries industry credibility even where this specific execution has not been individually decorated. Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness derives from the compounding logic of the platform: each successive Super Bowl appearance builds on recalled familiarity with the mountain device, reducing the cognitive load required for brand attribution and increasing the proportion of audience attention available for the entertainment payload. In the United States Super Bowl commercial environment — where a 30-second unit commands among the highest media rates of any advertising placement — that structural efficiency represents a measurable return on creative investment beyond what impression data alone can capture.
"Stallone Face" is a 60-second 2023 Super Bowl commercial from Paramount+ and Droga5. Sylvester Stallone and his daughters Sophia, Scarlet, and Sistine attempt to scale a version of Paramount Mountain carved in his likeness, joined by characters including Dora the Explorer, Beavis and Butt-Head, and Captain Pike, demonstrating the platform's catalogue breadth through spectacle.
Droga5 New York created the spot for Paramount+. David Shane directed it through production company O Positive. Scott Bell served as Chief Creative Officer, Dan Kelly as Executive Creative Director, and Gonzalo Navarro as Senior Creative Director, with Jeff Kim as Director of Photography and Joe Cooney as Production Designer.
"Stallone Face" is the third major expression of Paramount+'s "A Mountain of Entertainment" platform, which launched with the 2021 Super Bowl campaign. The platform uses Paramount Mountain as a recurring visual device. As reported by adage.com, Paramount+ CMO Domenic DiMeglio called the platform a "huge driver" of brand awareness in the United States.
CreatorIQ reported 105.0 million impressions for Paramount+'s Super Bowl campaign. Sylvester Stallone's Instagram promotion generated 909,000 views and 132,400 engagements, per CreatorIQ data. The Shorty Awards case study additionally documents 353,539 potential reach and 63,678 impressions on X for the campaign's activity on that platform.
Sylvester Stallone's daughters Sophia, Scarlet, and Sistine Stallone appear in the "Stallone Face" commercial. Their inclusion as his actual climbing companions adds biographical authenticity to the absurdist premise, grounding the spectacle in a genuine family dynamic and reinforcing the warmth of the brand's entertainment positioning in the United States market.
No verified award wins for the "Stallone Face" execution have been recorded at Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, Clios, or the Webby Awards, according to Clapboard's editorial research. Earlier installments of the broader "Mountain of Entertainment" platform did receive Clio Awards recognition, per musebyclios.com, establishing creative credibility for the wider campaign series.
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