By Ken Liebeskind

MILWAUKEE --

It’s not often that a company that makes shock absorbers uses a sentimental film about squirrels in its advertising, but that’s just what Monroe Shocks and Struts is doing in a new campaign from Cramer-Krasselt/Milwaukee.
    Accepted, a film about how a young squirrel’s acceptance to college is threatened when he is almost hit by a car (which fortunately has up-to-date shocks that enable a quick stop), began playing at www.monroesavethesquirrels.com and on YouTube on Jan. 6.
    It’s the first element in a campaign that will also include outdoor, radio and other online ads.
    “We thought all along it’s a low interest category and the goal was to make it top of mind,” said Cramer-Krasselt creative director Brian Ganther. “We wanted to make it something people understand and there’s a safety message built in. We decided those who would benefit most from increased stopping power would be squirrels.”
    “Squirrels make bad decisions” is superimposed over the shot of the young squirrel crossing the street as the car approaches. “You can make a good one, replace your shocks at 50,000 miles,” the spot concludes.
    The film features stuffed squirrels, who converse as they are shot in sedentary positions. “There are different ways we could have gone with the idea of squirrels,” Ganther said. “We could have used real squirrels or animated ones, but we made a choice to use stuffed squirrels for the branded humor we were going for.”
    John Dingfield, who directed and edited the film for SOLdesignfx and Cutters, said the use of stuffed squirrels was “the best way to shoot it cinematically to make it funny. We shot it the same way you would shoot a dramatic film with shots and counter shots, close-ups and medium shots and stuck the dialogue underneath like a regular commercial, with stuffed squirrels instead of actors.”
    Dingfield lensed the film in November in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, with shots of a house and a street scene included. “We shot it in HD with a Sony CineAlta and made sure we could get a prime lens package for depth of field and narrow focus so the backgrounds fell off and became soft, which allowed us to get a cinematic feel.” He also said the good lighting and DP gave it polish. “It’s almost over produced, it looks overly lit and saturated like a storybook,” he said.
    The soundtrack features soft instrumental music to set the mood and dialogue from four voiceover actors, Ma and Pa squirrel, their college bound son and a Monroe announcer.
    The campaign features the video ad instead of TV. “We could have cut some :30s but this was always intended for the Internet,” Ganther said. “Web video has fewer rules and constraints than TV, and allows you to push the creative. You can stay true to the content and do something longer. You get as much time as you need to get the idea across.” Accepted runs one minute and 10 seconds, just enough time to tell a rich and charming story about a college bound squirrel.

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