Ryan Reynolds Recruits Red Lobster CEO for MNTN's 'Spendless' Campaign

Ryan Reynolds has a new ad, and this time the punchline is Endless Shrimp.

MNTN, the connected TV advertising platform where Reynolds serves as chief creative officer, released a 45-second spot this week.

"Spendless" features Reynolds alongside Red Lobster CEO Damola Adamolekun, where they're shown pitching Performance TV to brand marketers.

The spot was developed with Maximum Effort, the creative agency MNTN acquired in 2021, and rolls out mainly across digital channels.

Adamolekun is an actual MNTN client who used the platform during Red Lobster's recovery from its 2024 Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

This was partly attributed to the Endless Shrimp promotion that cost the chain $11 million.

Reynolds draws a line between marketing excess and the platform's more measured approach, with Adamolekun there to confirm the pitch is real.

The campaign also gives MNTN a cultural reference point that its B2B audience is already familiar with.

A B2B Pitch Built Around a Real Failure

The casting of Adamolekun is the ad's sharpest creative decision.

Red Lobster emerged from bankruptcy in the fall of 2024 under new ownership, with Adamolekun appointed CEO in August of that year.

His decision to use MNTN during the chain's recovery gives the product demo real-world weight.

Previous spots have starred comedian Steve-O and leaned on similarly absurdist premises to walk viewers through the platform's self-serve functionality.

The Endless Shrimp angle lands for this spot, given its history and context.

The promotion became a widely covered cautionary tale about marketing missteps, which makes it a natural shorthand for the kind of excess the ad is arguing against.

MNTN's Approach to B2B Marketing

MNTN has built its brand almost entirely through Reynolds' presence, using celebrity and humor to sell a product aimed at marketing professionals.

According to the company, more than 90% of its clients had never run a TV commercial before signing up, which means the primary sales challenge is education.

The platform also uses AI-driven targeting to match advertisers with streaming audiences.

At the same time, its self-serve model is designed to remove the upfront planning cycles that have historically made TV advertising inaccessible to smaller brands.

Reynolds raised $119 million in 2022, and the company has been widely reported as a potential IPO candidate.

The latest campaign arrives as connected TV advertising continues to grow as a share of overall video ad spend.

The "Spendless" campaign offers a few observations worth noting for brands thinking about B2B creative.

• Cast real clients, not actors: Adamolekun's verifiable history with MNTN gives weight to the company's product claims.
• Use humor to lower the barrier to entry: Reynolds keeps the pitch conversational, which makes a technical product feel approachable.
• Let shared cultural references do the setup: Endless Shrimp is already a known story, and the ad skips the explanation and goes straight to the joke.

The spot is a clean example of how B2B campaigns can hold attention while still keeping the product argument intact.

Our Take: Does the Joke Sell the Product?

We think this is one of the stronger MNTN spots Reynolds has fronted, because it does more than make people laugh.

Adamolekun's involvement ties the humor to a story that's familiar and relatable to its audience.

B2B marketing has historically struggled with the tension between being informative and being watchable.

Here, Reynolds resolves it by making the product demo the punchline, and Adamolekun's willingness to joke about his own company's bankruptcy is what makes it land.

The real measure will be whether the humor brings in new clients or if this just earns Reynolds another round of good press.

Brands producing B2B campaigns that need to be both informative and culturally credible need agencies that understand how to make technical products feel human.

Check out the top B2B marketing agencies in our directory.