You can say anything with a smile. That’s the premise behind a smart new spot campaign for Crest toothpaste created by Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, and directed by Harold Einstein of bicoastal/international Station Film.
The effort, which won a Gold Lion for campaign at the recent Cannes International Advertising Festival, is comprised of three television commercials that find people delivering disturbing news with a smile, therefore making it more palatable to the recipients.
Case in point: This issue’s Top Spot, the :45 “Bulldozer,” has a construction worker sitting in the middle of a playground in a bulldozer.
“Hey, what are you doing?” a young boy asks.
“I’m knocking down the playground,” the construction worker says with a smile.
“Why?” the kid responds.
“We’re going to build a new power station,” explains the worker.
“What?” another boy says.
“A power station. They make all sorts of noise and smoke,” says the hard hat gent. “It’s exciting.”
“Can I play there?” yet another child inquires.
“If you can get over the fence,” the man says, still bearing a broad grin.
“You can say anything with a smile appears on the screen,” then the commercial cuts to a Crest title card with the tagline “Healthy, Beautiful Smiles for Life.”
Not only is “Bulldozer” quirky and humorous, it’s also breakout advertising for the category. How often do we see toothpaste commercials where we don’t view the typical product demonstration and hear about a toothpaste’s foaming action or some other “unique” quality?
As Saatchi & Saatchi creative director Kerry Keenan pointed out, the general public is fully aware of what toothpaste does, so “Bulldozer” and the two other spots in this Crest campaign focus on promoting the brand.
“The thinking is simple,” she said. “It is playing on the power of the smile. With beautiful, healthy teeth, and a great smile, you can get away with anything.”
In “Lice,” another spot in the campaign, a guy informs his girlfriend that he has lice, which means she probably does, too. Oh, and he got it from that pillow on their bed–and he neglected to mention before that he found that lovely pillow–on the street. Remarkably, his girlfriend doesn’t slug him.
Meanwhile, “Prenup” has a man–and his lawyer–surprising his soon-to-be-wife with a prenuptial agreement. After an amazingly cheerful discussion, she signs it.
When Einstein, a former advertising agency creative who had worked with Saatchi’s executive creative director Gerry Graf in the past, was given the scripts for the spots, he said that his eyes immediately skipped down to the bottom of the page and the line, “You can say anything with a smile.”
“I was afraid to look at the scripts after reading that because I kept saying to myself, ‘Please let these be as funny as the line suggests they’re going to be,’ ” Einstein said.
Thankfully, they were.
Casting All Teeth Solid scripts in hand, Einstein cast all three Crest commercials in New York, seeking people who were able to talk naturally with smiles plastered on their faces.
“That’s a very tricky thing to do, and almost everyone that came in was either forcing it, which made them come off as mean-spirited, or they were way over the top,” Einstein observed, noting that he ultimately and fortunately found three actors “who were able to pull it off with genuine sincerity and a gentleness.”
With his smiling actors in tow, Einstein and his DP Bob Gantz only had two days to shoot all three spots. A full day was spent on “Bulldozer,” which was shot in a beachside park in Far Rockaway, Queens.
Einstein served as a smile coach of sorts to actor Nicholas Webber, who played the construction worker. “What we told him was that when that smile comes on, it’s like you become Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the smile is the force, and you can hypnotize anyone into thinking anything you want with that smile,” Einstein said.
Clearly, the force was with Webber. The actor delivered, and what’s nice about his smile is it is natural. Some directors and agencies might be tempted to try to plus the humor by giving him a megawatt smile with a glow and a twinkle added through visual effects. But Einstein and Saatchi left well enough alone.
“There are all different kinds of smiles. They’re not all perfect Hollywood smiles, and he has a nice smile, and we didn’t have to mess with it,” Einstein said.
Cutting Crest Ian Mackenzie of New York’s Mackenzie Cutler edited “Bulldozer.” With 45 seconds, he had room to let the spot’s humor breathe, providing well-placed pauses that give the kids–and the audience–an opportunity to absorb what the construction worker is saying.
Another nice touch: We never actually see the destruction of the playground. We simply hear it in the last few seconds of the spot thanks to sound design provided by Mackenzie Cutler’s Marc Healy.
Looking back on the project, Keenan credits Crest with being willing to do something different for the category. “I’m not going to lie. They were nervous. There was a point where there was a fourth spot that they felt might be inappropriate just because it dealt with animals, so we didn’t do that,” Keenan said. “It was a bit of a process, but they stuck with us, and they were very brave.”
