One of the most well-known radio broadcasters in America's history, Paul Harvey, voiced a powerful and straightforward Super Bowl TV commercial for Ram Trucks in 1978, which is being lifted up today as one of the most memorable Super Bowl ads of the past...partially because God plays a starring role in the commercial. The ad aired during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLVII.
"So God made a farmer," is the refrain heard throughout the piece, which features Harvey's voice set to classic middle America imagery, reports Faith Wire.
Harvey refers to earth as "God's planned paradise," which is not something often heard in the middle of Super Bowl ads.
The ad focuses on all the qualities that make farmers people of high character: hard-working, family-oriented, thorough, tough and tenacious.
"So God Made a Farmer" was a speech given by Harvey at the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention. The speech was first published in 1986 in Harvey's syndicated column. The speech borrowed a few phrases from a 1975 article written by Harvey in the Gadsden Times, which was itself inspired by parts of a 1940 definition of a dirt farmer published in The Farmer-Stockman. The 1940 article was copied verbatim by Tex Smith in a letter to the editor in the Ellensburg Daily Record in 1949. The speech was given as an extension of the Genesis creation narrative referring to God's actions on the 8th day of creation.
In a collaboration with the FFA, Dodge agreed to donate $100,000 for every 1,000,000 views that the YouTube video of the ad received up to $1,000,000. This goal was reached in less than five days. There were eight photographers who participated and photographed the images in this commercial: Andy Anderson, Matt Turley, Olaf Veltman, Andy Mahr, Kurt Markus, David Beltra, David Spielman, Mark Gooch, Jim Arndt, William Allard, and Kurt Markus.
Harvey died in 2009.
