Sometimes the truth helps. That’s what Boston-based Arnold Communications is betting with its latest anti-tobacco campaign for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Tobacco Control Program. Produced by Olive Jar Studios, Boston, the six-spot campaign, titled "Outrage," pairs redesigned stock footage with a voiceover that reveals the plain but horrific facts about the dangers of smoking. The campaign broke on local network and cable stations last month.
One of the facts divulged in the "Outrage" campaign is that tobacco kills 470,000 Americans every year. According to one of the spots, titled "Airplane," you could crash two jumbo jets into each other every day for a year and it still wouldn’t result in as many deaths. "We did a bunch of focus groups and we talked to a lot of consumers," said Arnold creative director Peter Favat. "And what we found out is that even after five years of anti-smoking campaigns, people still didn’t exactly know the facts. One guy said, ‘Don’t tanning beds kill more people?’ In the same group, this other guy said, ‘What about lunch meats?’ I was sitting on the other side of the glass thinking, ‘Oh, my God. People have no clue.’ We just figured it was time to take the gloves off and give people the bare facts, to educate people as much as we can."
Another spot in the campaign, "Conscience" features an elderly woman lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to a life-support machine. Her image is contrasted by that of a young girl taking drags off a cigarette. As the two conflicting images of old and young alternate on screen, the voiceover reads "The tobacco industry needs your children. It’s an economic imperative. One business cycle winds down. Another picks up the slack. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business. Minus a conscience. Where’s the Outrage?" The tagline reads, "3,000 kids get hooked every day." All ads are tagged, "It’s time we made smoking history."
A Website, www.getoutraged, is also listed at the end of each spot, and Favat said the site has been receiving between 600 and 700 hits a day, "which is pretty good, since Massachusetts is so small." It is the first time Arnold has created a TV campaign (there are also print and outdoor ads) that leads the audience to a campaign-specific Website, and the creative director said he "definitely" wants to use the same strategy for the agency’s next anti-tobacco campaign, which targets young people.
As for "Outrage," Favat said that in addition to delivering the cold, hard facts to viewers, the goal of the creative team-which also included chief creative officer Ron Lawner, creative director Rich Herstek, art director Josh Blasingame, copywriter Bill Hahn and producer Amy Feenan-was to produce the campaign "in a way that’s kind of shocking and a little bit on the news side. That’s why we decided to use stock footage." The footage was supplied by various resources, including the CNN Film Library, Stock Shots, Film Archives, the National Geographic Film Library, Archive Films, Fish Films, and Energy Films.
After the footage was collected, Shondra Burke of the Edit Partnership in Boston assembled the six :30s. Then, to bring texture to the film, Arnold turned to Olive Jar, which specializes in film techniques including mixed media, stop-motion, CG, cel, drawn and live action/special effects. For "Outrage," Olive Jar director Fred Macdonald (who also served as the studio’s creative director) and executive producer Matthew Charde worked with a production team that included cameraman/DP Joey Kolbe, Adobe After Effects artists Alex Hart, Laura Kozuh, Jen Howard and Sharon Eagan, head of production Faye Cogen, senior producer Piper Rankine and associate producer Amy Murphy. Also involved with the production were associate creative directors Bryan Papciak and Rich Ferguson-Hull. Additional credits go to sound designer Stephen Dewey of Machine Head, Venice, Calif.; colorist Greg Dildine and online editor Tim Kane of Finish, Boston; and audio engineer Rick Sweetser of Soundtrack Studio, Boston.
Favat said they wanted "the quietness of the spots to stand out." To that end, Olive Jar employed various computer and manual techniques that brought a certain "vividness, age and luminance" to the stark images seen in the stock footage, according to Charde. Each frame in each spot, he said, was "hand-effected three different times"; the result was that the image was "actually degraded, but it added to the atmosphere of the image."
The first step in that process, Charde explained, was to load the edited footage onto a computer and manipulate the "grit, color, tone, texture and weave" with the Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects programs. The images on the computer screen were then shot in stop-motion on 35mm film. A negative was developed, and then a positive print of the negative was projected onto textured scrims and screens. Those images were again shot on film frame by frame, and then transferred to videotape.
Macdonald, who was unavailable for comment at press time, said in a released statement, "We knew the spots were going to be extremely powerful. The underlying cause lends an edge and urgency to the creative effort and the tough, in-your-face approach to this series is exactly in line with Olive Jar’s sensibilities. We were able to ‘let rip’ in terms of presenting really shocking images."
Charde added that the campaign was "a departure [for us at Olive Jar] in working with provided footage and imagery. But it’s not a departure in that Arnold came to us for our design sense. It was really great to be asked to do this production because of the sensibility of our reel. Not because there was something specific on our reel that looked like this, but because they liked the feel of our work and they wanted to bring that feel to something completely different. It was a real exciting challenge for us." Olive Jar’s recent credits include spots for Sprite via Lowe & Partners/SMS, New York (live-action footage was directed by Spike Jonze of bicoastal Satellite), ESPN out of Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Ore., Coca-Cola via Leo Burnett, Chicago, (with live action again directed by Jonze of Satellite), and Levi’s out of Foote, Cone & Belding, San Francisco. Additional clients include Samsung, MCI, Frito Lay, MTV and General Mills.
Olive Jar’s sales are handled by a trio of reps under the art.fx banner: New York-based Patricia Claire handles East Coast sales; Chicago-based Kitty Monaghan oversees the Midwest; and San Francisco-based Mary Vandamme handles sales on the West Coast.
