In a new animated web film for Comcast’s Triple Play–the company’s TV, phone and Internet service package–Jim’s girlfriend is on the phone with him and realizes he is not paying attention. She tells him she thinks she has vacuumed up her roommates hamster to which he replies, “uh huh, totally.” She goes on to say an ax murderer has just come down the chimney and set the living room on fire, and she gets the same response, “uh huh, totally.” After she says that a woolly mammoth has put the fire out and that she’s fine and gets another ho-hum reaction from Jim, she accuses him of “snurfing,” the word Comcast has come up with to describe the act of surfing the internet when you are supposed to be on the phone. The film complements a TV campaign that consists of three :30 spots that center around other slang terms like “snurfing” used for the activities that become possible when you sign up for a Triple Play package.
The spots end with the made-up words and their definitions and invite visitors to www.tripleslanguage.com, where they will find additional slang terms. Each word is featured on its own flash card, which provides the definition, correct pronunciation and the word used in a sentence. The animated broadband videos bring the sentences to life.
Goodby, Silverstein and Partners created the Comcast “Slanguage” campaign. The idea for the animated web films grew out of the need to also develop 10-second promos followed by a 20 second acquisiton offer that also run on TV to generate subscriptions.. “The guys that were doing the acquisitions suggested animation,” explained Chris Ford, one of the creative directors who worked on the campaign. “It ended up being a really smart idea because trying to communicate what these words do and mean in 10 seconds is kind of hard using live action. The great thing about animation is you can have huge time jumps and location jumps and you can do really silly stupid things that don’t work so well in live action.
“And you can do a bunch of them for not a lot of dough,” he added, pointing out that the one thing the creative team decided early on is the more words they introduce to consumers, the smarter it would be. Having said that, currently 11 words and corresponding animated films (some are longer than 10 seconds) can be found on the www.tripleslanguage.com website, which was developed with Perfect Fools, N.Y. There is also a chance for visitors to submit their own words describing how they use Comcast Triple Play. Eventually films will be added to the site to correspond with those words.
Workin’ round the clock
The animated web films were created by animator/director Matt Clark, a.k.a. Manbaby. The creatives tapped Clark because there was something simple and straightforward and not complicated about his style. They wanted the films and flash cards to have an instructional vibe and not be too flashy.
Clark explained that the characters he created are fairly realistic, comparing them to those you would see in the instructional manuals seen in airplanes. But he infused them with personalities. To achieve the look and feel of the films, he took pictures of himself and his wife and used them as references. Then he drew from them to keep animations realistic. He animated the drawings using an older version of Flash. “I’m set in my ways. I’ve tried other versions of Flash but they don’t have the same interface that I’ve grown so comfortable with,” Clark said.
Of the 11 animated films, Clark said his favorite is the one he created for “unibillation,” which is defined as a state of joy brought on by the convenience of having one bill instead of three. In the film, Gary breaks into a spontaneous modern dance routine in his kitchen. “It was the hardest and most time consuming, but it has sentimental value too,” Clark said, explaining he choreographed it by filming himself “busting a move.” “That was a good time,” he said with a laugh.
While he admits having a good time, he said the assignment was the most challenging he has ever done. He worked on the films for 43 days, only sleeping a few hours during some of those days. What made the intense experience manageable was Cathleen Kisich, broadcast producer at Goodby. “I formed a really good relationship with her. We were in contact 60 times a day. Her demeanor really made it easier for me to work 20 hours a day.”
Now he feels like he can do anything. “I took a couple of weeks off after the project and decompressed and now my energy level is just way up. I did not realize I could produce that much stuff in that much time,” Clark said.
