In the midst of the advertising blitz TV viewers are bombarded with daily, what type of commercial sets itself apart from the mundane? Senior copywriter John Simpson and senior art director Wade Devers of Arnold Communications, Boston, have some ideas on the subject. "Unless you’re advertising a very serious product, then humor is frequently the way to go; when it’s done well, it resonates with people in a way that attempts to be serious fail at," explains Simpson who, with Devers, is working on the Converse and Royal Caribbean Cruise Line accounts.
One of their latest ads for Converse is "Helium," which promotes the All Star He:01 sneaker. The spot, directed by Noam Murro of Stiefel & Company, Santa Monica, deflates the stereotypical commercial images of reverence and worship for basketball and its players—at least with the audio. "Helium" starts out as a typical sneaker ad. Action shots of a pick-up game are spliced with close-up shots of NBA stars Jalen Rose, Brevin Knight and John Starks. The humor comes when the players start trash-talking. The trio delivers lines such as: "This is my house." "I occupy the zone between the rim and the sky"; "Make plans for dinner cause I’m gonna eat your lunch"; and "Cream always rises," in squeaky, helium-distorted voices. "Visually, if you turn the sound down, that spot looks like it follows every convention of the performance shoe category. But if you turn the sound up, you see that it’s actually turning the whole thing on its head," says Simpson.
Converse came to Arnold when the agency purchased now defunct Houston Herstek Favat in ’97. Initially, Converse took a more serious approach in its commercials, with ads such as "Tunnel," directed by creative director Peter Favat for Houston Herstek Favat. (Favat is now a creative director at Arnold.) "Tunnel" shows Bobby Jackson playing ball while dismissing the importance of money and fame in favor of those who helped him become what he is today. "When Houston did ‘Tunnel,’ the basketball shoe market was drastically different," says Simpson. "I think a serious performance message resonated with people at that time. But now people are a little burned out about sports and athletic shoe advertising that’s serious and evokes a lot of reverence for the game. I think the market now is leaning towards an approach that doesn’t take itself so seriously.
"The client and Pete Favat had brought up and quickly dismissed the idea of helium voices because they felt it would be too silly for what they considered a landmark product," says Simpson. He and Devers, however, kept coming back to helium voices. "It just felt right. If you say ‘helium’ to anybody in this target audience, the two things they’ll say are ‘balloons and makes your voice high,’ so it just had so much universal appeal. We went back to the client and said this is too potentially good for us to [just] dismiss out of hand."
The client was sold, and the team wrote forty lines of dialogue and, with the client, picked those they felt worked best. "I think that a brand leader can be a little self effacing or self deprecating," says Simpson of "Helium." "[It takes] a very confident brand that can do that and know that people are going to take it the right way—[to know] people aren’t going to think, ‘They’re making idiots of themselves.’ Instead, people think, ‘Wow, that’s really cool that they can run a commercial like that.’ I like it and think it builds respect for the brand."
Although the pair looked at many reels and spoke with various directors, Murro was the obvious choice. "As soon as we said ‘helium, parody of typical serious athletes spot, high voices,’ Noam saw it exactly the way we wanted it to be done," says Devers, who adds that Murro "constantly came up with stuff to better our idea."
The Big Ship
Devers and Simpson are currently working on a new campaign for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, an account Arnold won in October. Spots for the Royal Caribbean are set to break in early 2000; director Paul Giraud of bicoastal HSI Productions is currently in preproduction.
The new work from Arnold will try to alter the perceptions of viewers. "We found out that in the cruise industry there are definite stereotypes of the category that are ingrained in people’s minds," explains Devers. "It’s mainly due to the way cruise lines promote themselves. They all say similar things, advertising in similar ways. They get pegged as vacations for people who are older and who just want to sit around and eat a lot."
Arnold wants to challenge those stereotypes by appealing to a younger demographic and to people’s adventurous sides. Devers explains that Royal Caribbean is looking to get a new crowd of people on their ships—"people like me and my partner, people that usually wouldn’t consider a cruise. We’re trying to convince [those people by saying] you know, a cruise isn’t all that you think it is. It’s a lot more, it can be more active, it can be more energetic and more appealing to the explorer in you."
Devers, who graduated from Aberdeen College of Art, Aberdeen, Scotland, and Simpson, who graduated from Providence College, Providence, R.I., first teamed up while at Boston-based agency Ingalls. One day, Simpson, who had done a short stint at Houston Herstek Favat prior to joining Ingalls, got a call from Favat, who had since moved on to Arnold. "Pete [Favat] just called me out of the blue and asked, ‘Would you be interested in coming to work for me again?’ I said, ‘Yeah but I’ve been working with Wade Devers—is there any chance we could be hired as a team?’ and he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’ It’s worked out really well."
Devers attributes his success with Simpson to similar working styles, a shared cynicism and getting along "more as friends than we do as just creative partners. I think we genuinely like each other, although we bust each other’s balls constantly." Devers believes Simpson is a good copywriter and says "sometimes that’s half the battle—finding a writer whose work you like, and [whom you] like to work with."
Simpson concurs: "In an art director/copywriter relationship, you’ve got to spend an inordinate amount of time with somebody—really as much time as you spend with anybody in your life—so it’s important that you hit it off friendship-wise, because with your partner you have to be brutally honest. You have to respect his opinion when he tells you he thinks your ideas are kind of stupid." Simpson also believes their relationship works because they both like the kind of advertising that "communicates the position clearly in a really intrusive, simple way, and more often than not, with a sense of humor."
The duo enjoys working at Arnold because of the small agency creative excellence standards it maintains, and the big agency budget it provides. "It can be tough sometimes at bigger agencies," says Devers, "because you feel you don’t have as much control over your own work as you would like. But so far, I haven’t felt that at Arnold, because I feel like people are listening to me. They’re asking my opinion because they want it."=
