Edouard Nammour Directs Two-Minute Branding Piece That Airs Worldwide.
By SARAH WOODWARD
If you were watching television around 9 p.m. local time on November 1, chances are you saw Ford Motor Company’s millennial effort, "Goodbye/Hello." That’s when the two-minute branding piece broke in what Detroit agency J. Walter Thompson (JWT) called an unprecedented worldwide roadblock.
"Goodbye/Hello" could be called the Titanic of the commercial world. It is long. It was expensive to produce. It packs an emotional punch, features one heck of a soundtrack, and millions of people worldwide have seen it.
Whether "Goodbye/Hello" will be as profitable a venture as Titanic remains to be seen. But such speculation is irrelevant according to Detroit-based Ted Powell, the senior partner/international account director at JWT who conceived the idea for the ad. Unlike the primary purpose of most commercials, Powell maintained that "Goodbye/ Hello" is different. "We’re not trying to sell anything," he said. "The spot itself is really a thank-you to everyone who’s ever owned a Ford, and a welcome to anybody that may ever buy a Ford Motor Company product in the future. It really is an emotional statement … about the new attitude of the [company, which wants] to be the best consumer-motivated company in the world. It’s all about understanding the consumer and relating to the consumer on an emotional level."
Moreover, Powell said, "In terms of what [Ford is] spending, if you look at their overall [promotional] budget, it’s a drop in the ocean."
That may be, but after the assignment was awarded to director Edouard Nammour of bicoastal Atherton, a few weeks passed before the client gave the final go-ahead. Parties involved declined to attach a price tag to what was clearly a multimillion dollar production effort, but the worldwide media buy alone was estimated to cost $10 million. "It was a lot of money for [Ford] to sign off on for a promotion for Ford as a brand, [as opposed to] a car or a launch or something specific," conceded one informed source. "There were some misgivings. But eventually everyone got on board."
By The Numbers
"Goodbye/Hello" was shot over 91 days in 15 locations in nine countries: Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, England, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S. Sydney-based DP Simon Duggan shot 150,000 feet of film, which was cut by editor Barry McMann of Toronto-based Third Floor Editing. McMann also cut a :60 version which will air nationally for the remainder of this year; additional :60s will be cut for use in other countries. It has not yet been determined if the ad will air during the Super Bowl.
An 840-person cast of non-actors was selected from parks, churches, nightclubs, malls and markets in the different locations. The worldwide production crew was almost as large, numbering in the 700-person range. Twenty-five different vehicles are showcased in the ad, from a Ford Model T to the carmaker’s concept vehicle Synergy 2000. The ad also features Ford’s six other major brands: Aston Martin, Jaguar, Lincoln, Mazda, Mercury and Volvo.
The original audio track for "Goodbye/Hello," titled "Just Wave Hello," was composed by Danny Beckerman of Yessian Music, Detroit. It was sung by 13-year-old Welsh soprano Charlotte Church, who also appears in the spot. The song is the first track on Church’s upcoming album, which will be released by Sony on November 15.
On November 1, the ad aired on 40 U.S. broadcast and cable networks, from ABC to the Weather Channel, Bravo to BET, CNN to Comedy Central. The ad also aired in South America, Canada, Asia, the Pacific Rim, the Middle East, India, the U.K., Europe and Africa.
For those who haven’t seen the spot, it is a montage of images that reflect the theme of what it means to say hello and good-bye. For instance, we see a young Indian woman gesturing hello to the camera, and another young woman tossing love letters from a second-story window to her once-lover, who stands in the street next to a Ford Ka. We see a pregnant woman in a scene that dissolves to reveal the woman with a baby in her arms. Another sequence shows a sad farewell between a man and his dying mother. Charles Jones, a Detroit-born war veteran who was imprisoned in Iran for 444 days, is also featured in the ad.
The automobiles in "Goodbye/Hello" serve as props: they appear on a television screen, or people are getting into or out of them. In some scenes cars are not featured at all, such as the closing sequence which features Church at the Minack Theater in Cornwall, England, at dawn.
New Challenge
The seed for "Goodbye/ Hello" was planted in ’97 at a JWT global business meeting. There, Ford Motor Company CEO Jacques Nassar asked his company’s advertising executives to think outside the box. "He challenged us to not wait to be told what to do, but to come to them with different ideas and thinking and challenge them as a client," said Powell. "I kept thinking that I needed to respond to that challenge, because … we’d never get another opportunity like that."
At the core of Powell’s idea was Henry Ford’s impact on the past century, in terms of mass production and affordable transportation—a theme that fit in nicely with the dawn of a new millennium. Powell first tapped Beckerman to compose the music. From there, a three-minute rip-o-matic was created of existing footage. Last November, the rip-o-matic and a two-page brief were distributed to several potential directors who were asked to give a presentation to the agency. The core creative team at JWT consisted of Powell; executive VP/executive management director Bryan Cooper; senior partner/executive management director Doug Molloy; senior partner/international account director Phil Mueller; and partner/executive producer Bob Ammon.
For his part, Nammour organized the piece into three "acts": past, present and future. "We also had a … mandate, which was to create images that were genuinely emotional as opposed to formulaic," the director said. "[We wanted] to flesh out the piece as a portrait of the world and humanity, to reach an emotional depth that you’re not used to seeing in a commercial."
In May, the production began for Nammour and his core team of 13, which included executive producer Beth Kinder; supervising producer George Wieser; line producer Susan DePalma; art director Brock Houghton and casting director Lisa Fincannon. Production support was provided by several companies, including Film Graphics Productions, Crows Nest, Australia, and London-based Branded Film. Atherton also relied on production service companies in China and Japan, and independent production managers in Italy, Germany and South America. Working 18-hour days six and seven days a week, the team encountered very few problems along the way. "It was like clockwork," said Atherton president Julie Atherton. "We only had one weather day in the thirteen-week shoot."
Even so, it was a large, potentially unwieldy, assignment. "Because shots were evolving every day, partly because of actors and locations and cultural nuances. The only way we could get a handle on it was to think of it as nine different commercials, one per country," Nammour said. The team captured about 200 different scenes in all. "The idea was that we would provide an archive of footage that Ford could use for region-specific :60s," said the director.
Changes
The number of special effects to be used in the ad changed during its production. Nammour, who is known for his graphic design skills, said, "Originally there was going to be a lot of compositing because we wanted to keep the images fresh and contemporary, but in the end we decided not to gild the lily." The visual effects and Inferno artist was Jeff Campbell of Toronto-based ToyBox. The post production team also consisted of Third Floor Editing producer Jane Broadfoot and ToyBox colorists Elaine Ford and Mike Pethel. Beckerman served as sound designer, and Tony Campana of Yessian Music handled audio post.
"It will remain for me the dream shoot of all time," said Nammour. "Now that it’s done—[everyone who worked on it]—we miss it." Added Atherton: "Everyone in the industry was congratulating us [for being awarded the assignment], but it wasn’t even about that. It was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Review: Writer-Director Adam Elliot’s “Memoir of a Snail”
It's not your typical stop-motion film when characters name pets after Sylvia Plath and read "The Diary of Anne Frank" โ or when the story's inspired by a quote from existentialist thinker Sรธren Kierkegaard. And it's certainly not your typical stop-motion film when you find yourself crying as much as the characters do โ in their case, with huge droplets leaking from bulging, egg-shaped eyes so authentic-looking, you expect the screen to get wet. But those are just a few of the unique things about Adam Elliot's "Memoir of a Snail," a film that's as heart-tugging as it is technically impressive, a work of both emotional resonance and great physical detail using only clay, wire, paper and paint. One thing Elliot's film is not, though, is for kids. So please take note before heading to the multiplex with family in tow: this film earns its R rating, as you'll discover as soon as young Grace, voiced by Sarah Snook, tells us she thought masturbation was about chewing your food properly. Sex, nudity, drunk driving, a fat fetish โ like we said, it's R-rated for a reason. But let's start at the beginning. In this, his seventh "clayography" (for "clay" and "biography"), the Australian writer-director explores the process of collecting unnecessary objects. Otherwise known as hoarding, it's something that weighs us down in ways we can't see, for all the clutter. Elliot also argues that it helps us build constrictive shells around ourselves โ like snail shells, perhaps. Our protagonist is Grace Pudel, voiced with a quirky warmth and plenty of empathy by the wonderfully agile Snook. We first encounter Grace as a grown woman, telling her long, lonely life story to her pet garden snail, Sylvia (named after Plath), at a moment of deep sadness. Then we flash... Read More