In the middle of Stanford Football’s 41-3 blowout loss to Arizona State last Saturday, fans at Stanford Stadium, and those watching on Fox Sports Net, paused — not just for a third-quarter timeout — but for a marshmallow in a microwave.

As a marshmallow bunny bubbled and bloated on screen, a nonchalant voiceover described how “the people of Stanford University answer the call” of the arts and sciences to invent technology such as the microwave — which is why, the voiceover finishes, “Hail, Stanford, Hail.”

Not the typical commercial break for a football game — let alone the typical ad for a university — “Klystron Tube” is one of three “Hail, Stanford, Hail” commercials that promote the Cardinal during televised athletic events. The other two are “FM Synthesizer,” which features a wild-haired keyboardist rocking out to FM waves, and “Laser Technology,” which features a cat chasing a red laser pointer.

In stark contrast, past years’ TV campaigns have featured singular commercials showing glimpses of the Oval, campus events and student life. Noticing similar ads from colleges across the nation, Stanford officials were looking for something that would “rise above the clutter,” according to Kate Chesley, information editor for University Communications.

“Most college institutional promotional messages are very predictable and follow a very similar format,” Chesley said. “We were looking for something different so we could better compete for the attention of alumni, students and others watching Cardinal sports.”

Stanford put out a call for ad proposals earlier this year. Of the four that responded, it was West Hollywood-based Dailey & Associates, headed by Stanford Business School alum Bruce Miller, that received the bid.

“The people we met with were open-minded to breaking out and doing something different that befitted the school’s unique character,” Miller said. “We did it and they bought it.”

Dailey & Associates’ creative team of Michael Miller, Tom Cordner and Will Lau took on the project and, after looking through Stanford’s Web archives, decided to highlight in particular its innovative achievements.

“Looking around, we learned about the irreverent personality Stanford has,” Michael Miller said. “We also found, though, that Stanford’s responsible for a lot of cool things, including some technology that people use every day.”

Putting the two together, the Dailey team thought it could have a winning combination of entertainment and enlightenment.

“We saw that, ‘Hey, there’s a potential match-up here, taking a very serious invention from Stanford and marrying it with a very irreverent tone that is uniquely Stanford,’” Bruce Miller said.

From a list of Stanford inventions that included fMRI, the Stanford-Binet IQ test and GPS systems, Miller, Lau and Cordner decided upon the three that had the most practical, everyday uses: the klystron tube (microwave), the FM synthesizer and the laser.

“A lot of universities talk about how their ideas ‘have changed the world,’” Cordner said. “It’s all overblown — talking about their community, research and diversity — and it’s all the same; no matter what university it is, it’s just a bunch of white noise.”

“We wanted to show that Stanford doesn’t take itself too seriously, but at the same time it really does have ideas that have changed the world,” he added.

Now, beyond the “white noise” of most university commercials, the “Hail, Stanford, Hail” commercials have met with the noise of laughter and applause and achieved a following at football games, on dorm email lists and on the viral Web site for the videos, hailstanford.stanford.edu.

Visitors to the site can not only watch the ads on repeat, but also share, download or embed the commercials on a Web site. Among that web audience is Diana Jaffe ‘09.

“I like the commercials because they’re really random and they show that not even the administration takes itself very seriously,” she said. “It shows they have a sense of humor, even if it is a little weird.”

While not involved in the making of the commercials, Dean of Freshmen and Transfer Students Julie Lythcott-Haims ‘89 said she was “simultaneously stunned and thrilled” when she first saw the commercials premiere at home football games.

“The message I take from the commercials is this: Stanford is a community of bright, clever, innovative people who don’t take themselves or their accomplishments overly seriously,” she said.

While there are no more commercials scheduled to premiere this season, Dailey & Associates said it would be open to continuing its partnership to bring, as Michael Miller said, “a fresh look that’s both silly and intelligent” to University commercials.

For now, whether on the big screen or computer screen, “Hail, Stanford, Hail” fans will just have to watch that marshmallow blow up over and over again.