Noam Murro doesn’t usually direct spots that are part of a long-established campaign. But the director, who works out of his Los Angeles-based production company Biscuit Filmworks, says he couldn’t resist when Chicago’s Energy BBDO approached him with the script for a :30 titled “The Affair,” the latest in Orbit chewing gum’s six-year-old campaign. “It just felt like such a departure from the campaign and such an original idea,” Murro reflected.
Historically, Orbit commercials have had the brand’s lovely British spokeswoman (played by Vanessa Branch) stepping into a situation where someone has a dirty mouth and saving the day by giving them a piece of gum to clean that dirty mouth. However, in the case of “The Affair,” which finds a wife confronting her husband and his mistress at his office, the trio featured is rendered incapable of uttering a bad word from the start because they are already chewing Orbit gum–so they are forced to spew the kinds of goofy insults third graders might swap on the playground.
“You son of a biscuit-eating bulldog!” the wife yells at her husband as she barges into his office to have at him and the other woman, who happens to be a co-worker of his.
“What the French toast?” he responds.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out about your little doo-doo head cootie queen?” she asks.
“Who are you calling a cootie queen, you lint licker!” the other woman angrily retorts.
“Pickle you, kumquat!” the wife shouts back. The bickering continues, with the wife eventually dumping a box of car parts at her husband’s feet. Turns out she put his prized convertible through the wood chipper in a fit of rage.
The Orbit spokeswoman suddenly pops up in the midst of the heated exchange. “Fabulous. New Orbit raspberry mint cleans another dirty mouth,” she proclaims.
The trio stops trading barbs long enough to flash smiles at the camera, then the fighting ensues in the background as the tagline “For a good clean feeling no matter what” appears on the screen.
“We augmented it a little bit here and there,” Murro said of the script. “But you’ve got to give credit where credit is due. I think [the creative team] really did a great job of writing it.”
Energy BBDO creative director/copywriter Mike Roe conceived “The Affair” with creative director/art director Frank Dattalo. The goal with the spot was to deliver Orbit’s message “in a fresh way that people haven’t seen before and to keep an element of surprise,” Roe said. “We don’t want people from the beginning going, ‘Oh, I bet this is an Orbit spot.'”
A-list directors
Not surprisingly, Roe and his colleagues were thrilled when Murro agreed to direct. “For us, he was a natural choice, a really smart thinker,” Energy BBDO Senior VP/Director of Broadcast Production Diane Jackson said of Murro.
Throughout the course of the Orbit campaign, Energy BBDO has been able to score A-list directors (Happy and Brian Beletic of bicoastal/international Smuggler are among the other major talents who have directed Orbit spots), Jackson pointed out, reasoning that it speaks to the quality of the campaign’s concept and writing.
As for working with Murro specifically, both Roe and Jackson were impressed from the start with his casting prowess. During auditions in Los Angeles, Murro grouped the actors in trios and had them run through the dialogue together. “Noam really had such a clear vision of what he was looking for, probably the clearest of anyone I’ve ever worked with,” Roe praised.
“He is very intuitive. Noam could tell very quickly if somebody was right or not,” Jackson remarked.
Some of the actors got tongue-tied given the unusual dialogue. “When the actors messed up, they actually swore,” Jackson said, “which in the context of what we were doing was really funny.”
“Pickle you, kumquat” was the line that most often made people burst out in laughter. “It was a good testing ground for the dialogue,” Roe said of the auditions.
Cast In the end, Murro cast Howard J. Rosen as the philandering husband, Jane E. McPherson as his angry wife and Jessica M. Lee as his defensive mistress.
Murro and DP Toby Irwin shot “The Affair” in an actual office in Los Angeles in one 10-hour day. The director chose to create a simple set up. “He didn’t overcomplicate the environment or the way he shot it,” Jackson said. “He kept it pure and really simple and let the language dominate.”
He also ensured that the pacing was quick enough to suit the situation. “The interplay was so important,” Roe added. “It is this ping-pong effect of one silly word begetting another silly word begetting another.”
There is always pressure on the set of a spot job, but Roe and Jackson said that Murro’s preparation and decisiveness helped make the experience of shooting “The Affair” enjoyable. “We had a great deal of fun with him, and he brought some fresh thinking to the words as well,” Jackson said. “I have to say on the set it was a laugh a minute.”
Another key player in the project: Editor Avi Oron of New York-based Bikini Edit. According to Jackson, Oron was instrumental in making sure the spot struck the right tone in terms of intensity and humor. “You treaded a fine line between it being emotional and being disturbing,” Jackson said. “We really had to find a middle ground to keep the humor working but not make it too intense and frightening, and our editor, who was great, did that.”
