Are you dragging through the day? Need a lift? A Starbucks DoubleShot should do the trick. That’s the simple message communicated in a distinctive and cool animated commercial introducing the brand-new Starbucks beverage to consumers. Created by Fallon New York, animated by PSYOP Creative Collective, New York, and featuring music by the band Yo La Tengo—the :30 "Drum"—is actually part of Starbucks’ first-ever national television advertising campaign. (The campaign includes four other ads—all :15s designed to run back-to-back. Two of these promote the familiar Starbucks Frappaccino; the other two tout the Starbucks DoubleShot.) This project also marks Fallon’s first step into the world of animation.
Judging by "Drum" in particular, the foray was certainly successful. The ad opens on a close-up of a can of Starbucks DoubleShot. The vantage point shifts to above the top of the can, which turns into a serene green globe. On its periphery, we see a man, a tree and a drum set. As the camera zooms in, the man—casually outfitted in reddish-orange pants and a green T-shirt—walks toward the drums. He sits down and tries to tap out a tune. But he doesn’t have much energy and quickly runs out of steam. Tossing his sticks high up into the air, the man drinks a Starbucks DoubleShot. Meanwhile, the sticks float downward, back toward him. By the time they’ve fallen back into his hands, he has downed the DoubleShot. Energized, he begins playing a quirky, catchy beat. At this point, we exit his world and come back to the original close-up of an animated can of Starbucks DoubleShot. A voiceover reveals, "New Starbucks DoubleShot is an invigorating blend of espresso and cream to get you going."
Throughout the spot, there are eye-catching creative touches, including a dragonfly that buzzes in and out of the picture, and leaves that fall from the tree and float through the air. The vibe of the ad morphs from a slow, laidback feel to a more energized state in which the man appears to be more awake and in tune with his surroundings after enjoying the caffeinated beverage.
According to Fallon executive creative director/copywriter Kevin Roddy, the agency’s creative team—which also included art directors Jeff Hale and Dave Mashburn—aimed to create "a magical little world for this man to live on, a place where all laws of physics could be defied so that anything could happen." The world in which "Drum" is set could have theoretically been created in a live-action setting—and that option was, indeed, considered—but the creative team chose the animation route because it offered them the chance to really go wild with their imaginations. "We really wanted this world to have a magical quality to it," explained Roddy.
Finding the right animation house to do the job took a lot of legwork. "We looked at—and I’m not exaggerating—probably close to one hundred animation companies around the world," Roddy reported. Ultimately, Fallon settled on PSYOP. "When we got to PSYOP, the chemistry was amazing," continued Roddy. "In talking with them, it felt like they were in our heads. They could almost finish our sentences for us, but they were also good about bringing new ideas to the spot in terms of what could happen in this magical world. They were very much a part of the creative process."
It should be noted that while great care was taken in selecting the right animation house, Roddy and his team also put a lot of thought into the music. "We listened to, and thought of, about a million different people, including your typical advertising music house. But Yo La Tengo’s style of music just fit with what our vision of this world was," said Roddy, who also happened to be a big fan of the Hoboken, N.J.-based band—famous for never playing one of its eclectic tunes the same way twice—before hiring them to work on this project. Yo La Tengo composed and performed music for all of the ads in this Starbucks campaign.
Back to the animation: At the outset, PSYOP—which animated all of the campaign’s spots—needed to devise a color palette, according to PSYOP executive producer Justin Booth-Clibborn. "We worked really hard on it because we also designed and illustrated the print campaign," he related.
According to PSYOP creative partner Kylie Matulick, who worked as a director/designer on the project, "[Fallon] came to us with a sense of what each product needed to describe in terms of emotion. The DoubleShot product was more energetic and alive, so that dictated not only the mood and the ideas, but the color palette. For DoubleShot we used earthy tones, but those tones are more red and yellow, whereas with the Frappaccino [spots] there were more coffee browns."
The look of the musician featured in "Drum" was another important consideration. "The brief the agency gave us called for an urban, hip guy, but not too hip. It was more to do with body language than with look," Booth-Clibborn explained. (The drummer—with his average build and black hair—happens to be based on a guy who works at PSYOP.)
As for the animation process itself, PSYOP creative partner Todd Mueller—who, along with the aforementioned Matulick and their fellow creative partner Marie Hyon, also worked as a director/designer on the assignment—noted, "It started out in 2-D. That’s how we like to work. The visual investigation is done purely from a creative perspective: We lock into our color palette and composition without the consideration of technology. Then we migrate that production into the animation wing and make it move. The way we did that was mostly through a software package called Softimage XSI."
Great attention was paid to detail. To get the movement for the drummer, for example, the crew actually videotaped Georgia Hubley, Yo La Tengo’s drummer—as she pounded the skins. "[The footage] wasn’t used for strict rotoscoping," Booth-Clibborn pointed out. "But it was a good starting point to get the basic movements."
Looking back, Booth-Clibborn said the most challenging aspect of the job was simply getting the work done—keep in mind PSYOP was simultaneously working on "Drum" and other spots in the campaign, as well as on the print portion—in the eight-week time frame allotted.
Good communication between the client, agency and PSYOP helped make that possible, according to Booth-Clibborn. Actually, before they even began the job, PSYOP wanted to make sure that Fallon and the client understood what the process would entail. "We took a case study of a spot that we produced earlier in the year, and we showed them the different stages that they could expect, and we coached them in understanding the process," shared Booth-Clibborn. As the job went into production, "We were careful whenever we showed them stuff to make it clear what they were approving," he said. "They were pretty understanding."
While the project moved along smoothly, it wasn’t without pressure. In fact, after PSYOP landed the job, "We met [agency chairman] Pat Fallon, and he said, ‘This is the first time we’ve ever done animation, so it better be good,’ " Booth-Clibborn recalled.
Fallon was thrilled with the way the animation turned out, according to Roddy, who sees "Drum"—as well as the other ads—as "visual poems. That might be a little highfalutin, but that is how I describe them to myself," he concluded. "They are magical the way poetry is."
