In the world of jeans, one man stands tall, head and shoulders above the rest: Buddy Lee.
And in the world of stock footage, one woman stands tall, head and shoulders above the rest: Susan Nickerson. Well, at the very least in the minds of the creatives at Minneapolis-based Fallon McElligott.
When the agency needed stock footage for the latest Buddy Lee Dungarees campaign, they hired Nickerson, who runs Nickerson Research, a Los Angeles-based stock research company, to find it.
"It’s very difficult [to find footage] unless you know where to go," says Harvey Marco, creative group head at Fallon. "So, tapping into her resources was invaluable to us."
The folks over at TBWA/ Chiat/Day in Los Angeles tapped into Nickerson’s resources when they contracted her to find images of great, progressive thinkers and artists (including Einstein, Gandhi, Picasso and Amelia Earhart, among others) for the Apple Computer campaign "Think Different," which was produced and directed by agency executive producer Jennifer Golub. A compelling collage spot from that campaign won a primetime Emmy for best commercial last year, thanks in part to Nickerson’s efforts.
Fallon was well aware of that fact when they hired Nickerson to work on last year’s Buddy Lee campaign (including the spots "Plane Going Down," "Tornado" and "Man of Action Trailer," as well as the short film The Buddy Lee Story). And it was an easy decision to decide to go with Nickerson again when it came to finding stock footage for the latest commercials.
This time around, the agency needed her help with three stock footage-intensive spots ("Animal Guy," "Sergeant" and "Blues Guy") in a campaign of five commercials directed by Phil Morrison of bicoastal Epoch Films.
Each spot features a host extolling the virtues of Buddy Lee, who is inserted into a variety of stock footage (there is some newly-shot footage also). In "Animal Guy," Jack Hanna, the host of the TV show Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures, chronicles Buddy Lee’s exploits with wildlife. The spot opens with a herd of zebras before showing the little guy being stalked by a crocodile, charged by a rhino and riding on the back of a sprinting cheetah. The spot ends with Buddy Lee in peril: he is about to be scooped up by a swooping hawk.
In "Sergeant," a World War II vet praises Buddy Lee’s wartime efforts. The spot features World War II-era black and white footage of Buddy Lee standing in front of a crowd and an American flag lit by Klieg lights. He is then seen piloting a fighter plane, posing in a photo between Joseph Stalin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, being run over by a tank and later refusing to move in front of another moving tank, which stops before hitting him. There is also a still photo of Truman holding up a newspaper.
"Blues Guy" features legendary R&B artist Bobby Womack recounting Buddy Lee’s days as a blues musician. This spot also features black and white footage. Buddy Lee is seen posing with a band. A club with Buddy Lee’s name on the marquee is shown as well as footage of an out of control crowd trying to get in. Meanwhile, the charming little guy is shown tearing up the dance floor with a beautiful woman. As the spot ends, the interviewer makes a remark about Buddy Lee. Womack wonders aloud who Buddy Lee is, admitting he was talking about blues guitarist Buddy Guy all this time.
Animal House
While many people might assume that finding the animals for the "Animal Guy" spot was easy, it was actually one of the most difficult tasks. In fact, Nickerson went to over 20 stock footage houses researching footage for that spot alone. (Aside from the footage of Jack Hanna, the only original footage shot for the ad were the shots of a zebra dragging a man and the shot of the cheetah running with Buddy Lee attached.)
Nickerson found the zebra stampede and the hawk swooping down at The Image Bank in Santa Monica, Calif.; the crocodile shot came from National Geographic Television, Studio City, Calif.; and the charging rhino was from BBC Worldwide Americas in Burbank, Calif.
While "Animal Guy" had its challenges, so did "Sergeant." Nickerson was able to quickly find most of the war footage and the historical still photos, but she spent hours searching for shots of a rolling tank shown coming to a halt. "You can search for a year, and with enough time and money you can probably find just about anything. But you have to be realistic with a commercial at a certain point and give up. To really get exactly what they wanted, they decided to shoot it," Nickerson says.
Meanwhile, she found stock shots for "Sergeant" in New York at Hot Shots Cools Cuts, FPG International, Archive Photos/Archive Films, and at SuperStock, San Francisco, and Fish Films Footage Worldwide, Studio City.
The process was complicated and at times tedious, but Marco says it was well worth the effort. "Looking at stock images, you get a sense of history and time," he says. "And we wanted a historical and natural look to this."
