“Everything is getting faster, sexier, more powerful, and yet less expensive. So why not cars?” says a voiceover featuring Matt Dillon in Pontiac’s recent “Drop” spot. It’s one of three case studies SHOOT found that proves automotive advertising–like the cars themselves–is on the fast track to innovation, posing challenges, in a good way it seems, to agency producers. Here a handful share how recent ambitious projects stretched their roles in new and exciting ways.
Team Effort Gone are the days of the generic, impersonal trade show/auto show experience where a dealer talks to visitors about something technical and shows them a cross section of the car so they can see all the parts. For Wired Nextfest, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, teamed up with Obscura Digital and the Barbarian Group to let people explore the Saturn Green Line, an affordable hybrid line, in a way they’ve never done before and then leave a mark and feel as if their voice was part of that experience.
In a 4,000-square-foot space, anchored by a 45-foot-wide reactive and interactive high-resolution screen wall, visitors were asked the question: “What if everyone drove a hybrid?”
Taking advantage of the user-generated content trend, when an answer was typed into the kiosks, a blade of stylized grass grew on the screen. Visitors were also asked to sign up for Green Line updates. To make the overall encounter more personal, the agency created two holographic people who use a number of graphics to describe how Green Line technology works. Finally, thanks to Obscura’s car projection technology, people could see the inner workings of the cars in the Saturn Green Line as if they were looking through an x-ray.
“The automotive category is very staid. For Saturn it’s important this year to be innovative and reach customers in new and different ways. Ultimately the way we approached it is how could we help Saturn talk about their new hybrid cars in a hybrid way,” says Hashem Bajwa, Goodby’s digital lab director.
The hybrid theme ran through the project in a lot of different ways.
“It was even produced in a hybrid way,” Bajwa explains. “We are seeing at the agency overall that there is a need to integrate production across different mediums via broadcast, online, et cetera. They are blurring. So we have become very flexible as an agency as to how that happens. This is one example where you’ve got different people from different disciplines coming together to make this work.”
For Brit Charlebois, senior interactive producer at Goodby, this was one of the most exciting projects she has ever worked on.
“All the producers who were involved worked together to pull this thing together because it’s not only interactive and incorporates video, there are all these material pieces that have to come together as well,” she says, pointing out that the actual cars were displayed on rock gardens. Realizing there weren’t enough rocks for the displays, they had to at the last minute ship rocks from a quarry in Brooklyn.
And since the budget never quite matches the idea, she and the rest of the team found themselves getting even more creative on how to execute all the different components.
“Initially we wanted to have some floor graphics that were digital, but we had no budget to do it so we figured out a way to create these large stickers from vinyl. In the end it had an amazing look,” Charlebois says.
“It was remarkable for me typically being in interactive and being at my computer all day. To finally have some hands-on experience was very interesting. But I think this is the new world order. I am glad to be a part of it. I want to have all those experiences as a producer. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Hilary Bradley, senior broadcast producer, was also flexible in her role. Video wasn’t in the initial plan for the hologram, but it was something everyone at Goodby felt passionate about.
“We thought if this whole thing is going to be interactive, why not have a spokesperson who can be interactive? The way we set it up is he was looking around and once a person would come up, it would trigger him to start talking about the hybrid and it was very interactive with people he was talking to. This wasn’t accounted for in the budget so we had to basically do it in-house. I got some local people to help us film. I did the casting myself, and I was the makeup person and wardrobe person to pull it together.
And being able to take advantage of our in-house graphics was amazing because they do such great work. They worked day and night to really push the graphics to be 2D and 3D around this guy and really interact with him.”
Bradley, who’s been at Goodby for five-and-a-half years and who started at TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, working mostly on Nissan, says this is not the only instance when she has stepped out of her typical role.
“We are all coming together. In broadcast every job I work on I am also sitting in on interactive meetings and medium meetings. Its not just about a spot anymore.
“It’s how can you integrate it online. Those department lines are really blurring because everyone is stepping in and helping out.”
The biggest lesson everyone involved learned from not being siloed into different departments is that anything is possible.
“It takes people like Hashem and the creatives and the planners to look outside the box of what’s possible. I’m game. I want to know how we can take these things and implement them in different ways and use the media and technology that is out there to do that,” says Charlebois, who joined Goodby when the agency didn’t even have an interactive department. Now the department is comprised of 22 people.
“I think it requires you to be very flexible and willing to change and willing to deal with technology you don’t understand. Everyday we are seeing more technologies come out. The biggest lesson is you have to be flexible and ready for anything.”
Reaching New Heights In most cases, car commercials focus on showing off the vehicles. Not that that doesn’t happen in Pontiac’s “Drop” out of Leo Burnett Detroit, but it was refreshing for Burnett producer Jennie Hochthanner to be able to add to the spot in other interesting ways–like drop a car and a telephone booth from 40 feet in the air.
“Drop” shows older, clunkier objects juxtaposed against more interesting, smaller sexier objects. The spot opens with an old-fashioned computer crashing into the frame, shattering into–not a million little pieces–but a million sleeker, more compact laptop models. Then a stereo comes crashing down, breaking into fragments that look like MP3 players. Next a telephone booth smashes and becomes a bunch of tinier, edgier cell phones, at which point the aforementioned voiceover featuring Matt Dillon, says, “Everything is getting faster, sexier, more powerful, and yet less expensive. So why not cars?” An old car drops in from above and explodes, turning into the G6 as Dillon says, “Say Hello to the G6.”
“We went in and actually dropped items from 40 feet up in a hangar south of L.A.,” says Hochthanner.
“It was a really fun shoot. Then we took all these live objects and married them with CG hand-modeled objects such as cell phones or MP3 players.”
Even though the objects crash and become new things, Hochthanner wanted it to feel seamless and organic and this posed the biggest challenge for the producer. She looked at both live action production companies with live action directors who would pair themselves with an effects house as well effects houses who were capable of shooting live action.
“We bid eight or nine different companies and usually we do three, maybe four. But we wanted to really make sure we had the proper people working on this,” she says.
She chose live action director Filip Engstrom from bicoastal Smuggler, who had paired himself with Asylum, Santa Monica.
“A lot of the stuff I have been working on for Pontiac in the last couple years has been graphically driven. but for me working with a company like Asylum was particularly exciting,” says Hochthanner. “I wanted the live action and the CG work to feel like one item. Most visual effects houses will say it would have been that way no matter what. But my personal opinion is I don’t necessarily think that’s true. Sometimes effects jobs can get lost in the effects world too much, and I think this had a nice level head to it.”
She is also pleased with the decision to not use sound effects, which would have been more of the norm for a spot like this. Instead she says that she had numerous hands in the pot searching for just the right music.
For about a year and a half Pontiac has been tapping bands who are lesser known. Everyone agreed “If You Don’t Get What You Want” by up-and-coming dEUS was perfect for the spot. Grant Castleberry of Gold Sound was tapped for music/sound design.
Hochthanner is no stranger to car commercials. Before joining Leo Burnett two-and-a-half years ago, she was at BBDO Detroit for six, where she worked on Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge.
What stands out about “Drop” was the “collaboration among the agency, director and effects company. It was one of the most pleasant jobs to work on,” she says. “Everyone’s excited about the spot.”
Lights, Camera, Action Nissan was ecstatic to become a sponsor of the Heisman Trophy and gave TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, the task of branding Nissan with the Heisman in a creative fun way. The resulting two spots–which show university mascots chasing the trophy that sits in the back of a Nissan Titan truck across the country to New York City where the award ceremony takes place–feel more like movie sequences than TV spots because of all of the action, stunts and special effects.
“It was an interesting project in that there was a fair amount of special effects. We had to make it look like this huge chase across America. There were quite a few elements that were missing while we were shooting that were all done in post. It always makes it more challenging in terms of production but fun all the same,” says producer Colleen Wellman, who’s been with the agency for eight months after working at Wieden + Kennedy for eight years.
It might have been even more challenging if they hadn’t chosen French director Thierry Poiraud of Paranoid US and visual effects house BUF, Paris, who mapped out each difficult shot throughout the five-day shoot, which took place in downtown Los Angeles and Palmdale, Calif.
“Each shot was so complicated. We would have to shoot the action of the Trojan knowing there were some spaces there where we’d have to put in CG animals. We had to constantly remind the client, ‘This is is not an empty space, that is going to be a CG animal.’ And when Thierry sets up the shots, they are very complex with a lot of different elements and layers going on. I’ve never seen a director work in such a detailed efficient way but it’s complicated at the same time. I was quite impressed with him,” says producer Elizabeth Giersbrook, who had stints at Grey and Deutsch before landing at TBWA/Chiat/Day.
An example of that attention to detail can be seen in “The Chase/Act II,” where a buffalo is seen running down the sidewalk and people and tables scatter everywhere. The tables flew around in a specific order worked out by Poiraud and BUF so when they put the buffalo in, it looks like the buffalo is knocking the tables away.
The producers were also impressed how Poiraud stayed directly involved with BUF throughout the entire postproduction, which they admit is different from some American directors.
Poiraud’s problem-solving skills were also invaluable. A lot of research and time went into getting approval from colleges to be featured in the spots and on how their mascot was going to be represented. It was a constant juggling of which schools would give confirmation. “He was so great at helping us adapt because every day the job would change. He would be like, ‘Okay, if he’s out then we can put this mascot in here. If we have to take out a leprechaun then lets put in a mountaineer and have him do the leprechaun’s actions. He’s from France and we weren’t sure if he would get the whole college football vibe, but he had such a fun way of having these mascots tell the story.
“For example he said lets bring the Ohio State Buckeye in toward the end of the first spot and it really did create much more of a climactic ending–the way it was one of the biggest mascots, the way it bounced in. It came from out of nowhere. We thought that was so clever.”
Poiraud was also credited for his affinity in determining when it was best to shoot live animals and when to create them in CG.
Speaking of animals, the producers discovered they are not much easier to work with than actors. “The African Elephant we wanted was booked. They have larger ears and tusks. And the backup elephant was sick. It was like dealing with actors,” Giersbrook says with a laugh. “So we got an Indian elephant with smaller ears. I e-mailed Colleen in France, do you have time to create larger ears and tusks?”
They also learned to have backup stunt people. Their prime stunt man got injured and the backup guy they hired got called to an audition and ended up leaving the shoot. “We put one of the horse wranglers, who also happened to be a stunt man into the outfit and he turned out to be fantastic. Then we got a backup for him in case he got injured.”
Giersbrook’s overall advice having wrapped such an ambitious project–“You always have to keep thinking ahead of the worse possible situation that could happen and always have backup options so the shoot does not get slowed down.”