In SunAmerica’s :30 "Safety," your retirement plan—as embodied by a guy sporting a red tee-shirt reading "retirement"—is acting strangely. In one vignette, Retirement Man (played by Colin Mochrie of Whose Line Is It Anyway?) walks right into a pole; in another the lens focuses on Retirement Man risking life and limb to feed a pigeon out on a ledge while his bemused investor looks on. Finally, Retirement Man’s casual attitude towards safety wreaks havoc when he peeks into the back of a truck labeled "Animal Control." As his oblivious investor in the foreground reads the paper, through the window behind him we watch a dog spring from the truck, attacking Retirement Man: Oof. The tag asks, "How safe is your retirement plan?" Point taken.
"Safety," along with the campaign’s other spots—"Neglect" and "Working"—literally puts a face on SunAmerica’s retirement services. The commercials were created by Deutsch LA and helmed by Kinka Usher, of Santa Monica-based House of Usher Films. According to Deutsch LA’s associate creative director, Chris Ribeiro, "The ‘Safety’ message is particularly relevant right now because of the economy—it’s a reminder to check on your investments, and maybe give that business [your retirement funds] to SunAmerica."
When they started working on the campaign earlier this year, Deutsch LA’s senior copywriter Martin Dix and senior art director Mick Kuisel suggested personifying retirement. This notion immediately captured the imaginations of Ribeiro and VP/associate creative director Karen Costello. The idea of making retirement a person—and a person who manages to convey both affability and haplessness with the tilt of an eyebrow, no less—makes the idea of investment more accessible.
As Ribeiro observed, "It’s easy for people to ignore the abstract concept of a retirement plan. But when you make retirement a person, suddenly it’s a lot easier to relate to and remember, and a lot harder to ignore." The team came up with many scenarios illustrating the importance of safety; unfortunately, some proved impossible to film: "At one point Retirement Man was going to get set on fire to demonstrate safety," Ribeiro told SHOOT. Nonetheless, "We think we ended up with the right combination of events in the end."
None of the spots contains dialogue. In "Safety," Retirement Man stumbles into risky situations, allowing the viewer to associate carelessness in financial planning with physical danger. "We wanted these scenes to play out as a pantomime. … We wanted the character to be humorous, but not a dolt. And he has to play a lot of emotions on his face," Ribeiro related. "The character gives SunAmerica an icon in an arena where a lot of companies are taking a different tack creatively, and going back to the serious, solid attitude. Not many financial companies out there have an icon, and this is another way to brand SunAmerica."
The tone of the spots was of primary importance, explained Costello: "The client was really sensitive to having the humor not be too silly." After all, "People’s finances are serious, and I don’t think [consumers] want to feel that a company’s taking it lightly." That was one of the reasons the creatives hired Usher. "When we had conference calls with Kinka, he just nailed the direction we wanted to go in, right off the bat," Costello recounted. "He mentioned [incorporating] an almost British style in the humor—not making it feel too silly, but silly enough to be funny and catch you off guard."
Usher explained that the spots’ style of humor could be traced to his own appreciation of British television: "I was always amazed by how dry, and yet how over the top, everything was in shows like Monty Python," he offered. "They would do silly things like have a guy dressed in a suit walking down some hoity-toity Knightsbridge street, doing this very unusual walk, with a completely straight face. That to me was always very funny." Usher noted that part of the appeal was that the scenes were "set in a controlled environment. So that was kind of the inspiration behind ‘Safety.’ " For example, in the final shot, "I wanted everything to be serene and quiet [in the foreground as the man sips his coffee and reads the paper]. And then I wanted to create this background tension, so you were forced to look beyond this guy drinking coffee. That was the impetus for the way we designed the spot."
Usher observed, "I came on very early in the project, about a month before shooting, and that gave us [Usher and the creatives] an opportunity to write a lot together. I think that really helped the end product. … We constantly changed scenarios, right up until the shoot date. We also happened to have a great client; she pushed us forward and made us do better work. She kept using the phrase, ‘Let’s drill it down, boys.’ " Usher said that part of drilling it down was making the commercial "fit the idea. That’s something I’m always, always, working on: I’m trying to make the script as good as the idea, and to not influence the script with too much fancy business."
Editor Glenn Martin, of Nomad Editing Company, Santa Monica, agreed. He noted that his aim was to "keep it very simple, let the scenes play out without cutting around too much, and preserve the physical comedy. … It was a matter of restraint and letting the scenes play out in the way Kinka had designed them to play out."
As Ribeiro pointed out, "That last scene is a real metaphor for how people’s lives are: You’re sitting there, drinking a cup of coffee, having no idea that your IRA is getting pummeled in the market."
