How do you fit 100 years of American history into a :60? You turn to Ewen Cameron and Jason Peterson of Berlin Cameron & Partners, New York. The creative team’s New York Life ad, "Past, Present & Future," depicts the most visually evocative events of the 20th century and beyond as they unfold around the financial services firm’s Manhattan headquarters.
Directed by Gerard de Thame of bicoastal HSI Productions and London-based Gerard de Thame Films, the spot begins in black and white, with an early-model plane flying above the New York Life offices. As the decades progress, images of color footage of the end of WWII jubilation and a ticker tape parade for astronauts unfold. The Concorde races through the sky during a vivid, contemporary scene, in which a young girl enters the building. In the ad’s final, futuristic moment, a young woman boards a waiting hovercraft taxi and zooms away.
For Cameron and Peterson, it was important that the idea be realized in a fresh, innovative way. New York Life had shifted its account to Berlin Cameron & Partners after years with TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York. The creatives wanted the change to be apparent. "Chiat/Day had a campaign that showed the very early stages of [construction] on the New York Life building," explains Cameron, co-founder of the agency and planning director/ copywriter. "We felt that while that was successful in the [market] research, the danger was that it positioned them as an old fashioned company." Cameron says that he and creative director Peterson decided to "use the building as a metaphor, and show how it has been stable through history and continues to be in the present day and on into the future."
Choosing the right director was easy. "Jason, our executive producer Dane Johnson, and I discussed a number of directors, but we quickly decided on Gerard," Cameron recalls. "We liked him for this project for a couple of reasons. One was that he shoots beautiful film. That was important because we really did want it to feel beautiful, epic and grand. But maybe more importantly, he’s wonderful at getting human emotions into his spots, and we didn’t want it to feel cold."
When the creative team first drew up the storyboards, the ad was definitely on the chilly side. "Originally, we wanted to do it in one take," Cameron explains. "If you imagine the camera above the building, moving around in a circle, you would see the environment around it change from above. The board that we presented to Gerard was based on that. It was his feeling—and also the chairman of New York Life’s feeling—that if we did that, you wouldn’t get a sense of humanity. You’d be off in the sky, just seeing the architecture changing."
Cameron says the creative team was able to humanize the idea by "coming down to the streets," and showing history from a closer perspective—with the help of de Thame’s considerable technical skills. "Gerard was really great at making the film feel like it was really of that period," he praises.
"Past, Present & Future" is the first spot in a new campaign. Two spots in the package will be :30s cut down from the original :60. Cameron says those spots will be new edits. The third spot, also directed by de Thame, will feature images of the changes in communication technology. "We see someone receiving essentially the same story through a newspaper from the twenties with a newsboy on the street, then through the first television, then currently, through pagers, and then into the future through digital technology," Cameron says.
Despite the dramatic scope of the New York Life campaign, the spots only took four months to complete. Special effects-wise, they didn’t pose much of a challenge—at least compared to Reebok’s "Clones," directed by Samuel Bayer of bicoastal Mars Media, which Cameron helped to create last year. In that commercial, one of many cloned runners literally comes out of his shell to emerge as a unique human being. "That was a huge technical job: to make that happen without having it look really silly," Cameron recalls.
While he enjoys working on large-scale projects like "Clones" and the New York Life campaign, Cameron finds equal pleasure in simpler ventures. "At this agency, we try not to just do one thing," he explains. "We try to figure out the right voice for each particular brand."
Cameron didn’t plan on a career in advertising. After graduating from Scotland’s University of Glasgow with a degree in philosophy, he worked as a roadie for several years before his then-girlfriend suggested he "stop screwing around and get a proper job. I figured out that advertising had some relevance to philosophy, because it’s basically figuring out why people do what they do—their belief systems," he recalls. Cameron became an account planner with BMP, London, and stayed there for seven years. "I was allowed to do some creative work there as well," he says. "I always crossed over between the strategic and creative disciplines, which is what I continue to do."
When BMP took a minority stake in Goodby, Berlin, Silverstein, San Francisco (now Goodby, Silverstein & Partners), Cameron became acquainted with agency partner Andy Berlin, who eventually left the shop for New York. "Andy called me up and asked, ‘Are you interested in coming to New York?’" Cameron remembers. "It was the one place in America where I really wanted to go and live. So I came here, and we’ve been working together for about a decade."
Berlin became president of DDB Needham (now DDB), New York, where Cameron was his account planner. Cameron first partnered with Berlin at Berlin Cameron Wright, a now defunct shop partly owned by DDB. Berlin then launched Fallon McElligott Berlin, the New York office of Minneapolis-based Fallon McElligott. Cameron was partner/ head of planning at the agency. After splitting with Fallon, Berlin and Cameron set up Berlin Cameron & Partners. (Fallon still maintains its own New York office.)
While he does occasionally miss the U.K., Cameron does not miss working for a large company. "Working in a smaller place is a lot more fulfilling," he says of his agency, which now staffs 60. "We have a lot of interaction with our clients, and we don’t have that entrenched point of view about the business that you have at a big agency. Also, we’re pretty seasoned in production. We may be small, but we believe we can handle the big, difficult projects."
