Chocolate and romance seem to go hand in hand. And with a storyline showing a couple aging over the years, you’d figure a commercial promoting Cadbury’s Caramilk chocolate candy bars would be sweet, perhaps dangerously so for a diabetic.
Yet while there is indeed a sweetness to this commercial titled “Eat Fast,” the mood is not quite so loving with the wife getting a perverse jolly about keeping her Caramilk bar to herself.
We open circa the 1950s with a young man returning home from work, his wife on the couch about to finish the last square of a Caramilk bar. Hoping she’ll give him that remaining bite of chocolate, he steps toward her only to see his bride immediately woof down the scrumptious morsel.
This same scenario is repeated through the decades with hubby and spouse aging fairly gracefully. But the man still hasn’t been able to get a taste of his wife’s Caramilk.
Finally, though, it seems he has a shot at sweet-tooth nirvana. Old and borderline decrepit, needing a metal walker to move along, he enters the front door to find his wife with almost half a bar left. Clearly age has slowed her digestion so she’s not as far along in consuming her Caramilk as she had been years ago.
Propelling himself and his walker toward her, the man has hope etched on his face. But his wife manages to shove the sizeable remainder of the Caramilk into her mouth. With that her initial worried expression changes to a smile as the yet again disappointed hubby grouses to himself and walks away.
A parting product shot showing the Caramilk bar, with its caramel inside oozing out of a corner, is accompanied by the simple slogan, “Too good to share.”
“Eat Fast” was directed by Steve Chase via The Partners’ Film Company, Toronto, his long-time spot roost in Canada. Chase recently shifted his U.S. representation from Santa Monica-headquartered Reactor Films to bicoastal Go Film (SHOOT, 1/26).
MacLaren McCann The Caramilk commercial is the latest in numerous collaborations between Chase and agency MacLaren McCann, Toronto. In fact the director and ad shop are no strangers to “The Best Work You May Never See,” teaming on such work as X-Box’s “Tic-Tac-Toe,” which made the “Best Work” gallery in ’03, and a pair of ’05 entries: Dentyne’s “Frozen Head” and Tylenol’s “Pistachio.”
The latter two are akin to “Eat Fast” in that all are comedy commercials. “Tic-Tac-Toe” was also humorous but was more extreme sports-oriented and driven by fast-paced action as we see young guys playing an acrobatic game of rooftop tag, which an aerial view reveals to be a high-rise game of tic-tac-toe.
The MacLaren McCann core creative team on “Eat Fast” included VP/group creative directors Andy Manson and Kerry Reynolds and agency head of broadcast/producer.
Gigi Realini was executive producer for The Partners’ Film Company, with Diane Saunders serving as producer. The DP was Dan Mindel.
Major draw Chase said he was drawn to the Caramilk job for its comedic storyline and the chance to show a relationship progress chronologically yet at the same time stay the same relative to the wife’s behavior when it came to the chocolate bar and her husband. The director added that he particularly values the longstanding working relationship he has enjoyed with MacLaren McCann, which has provided him with work spanning multiple disciplines, including comedy, drama, action/adventure and problem-solving propositions.
Indeed he’s regarded as more of a generalist in Canadian ad circles while his reputation stateside has been primarily in people-based comedy, notable examples including such Super Bowl advertising as Bud Light’s “I Love You Man” fare, Bud’s “Paper or Plastic?” spot (in which cash-strapped guys elect to buy beer instead of toilet paper at the supermarket check-out line), Dorito’s “Laundromat” (which helped elevate Ali Landry to celeb status) and pre-kickoff Pizza Hut commercials starring Jessica Simpson and The Muppets.
“Eat Fast” certainly fuels Chase’s comedy reputation both in the United States and Canada. “It’s one of those spots in which the humor is grounded in people and how they interact with each other,” related Chase. “It’s comedy that has some depth to it, which is among the things I love to take on as a director.”
Michelle Czukar of Panic & Bob, Toronto edited the Caramilk job.
