Casting actors is tough, but it isn’t so easy to cast a coffee table either. Just ask director Rupert Sanders of Omaha Pictures, Santa Monica, and Steve Simpson, creative director of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco. A coffee table is in essence the star of a spot they created for client Hewlett-Packard (HP). Entitled "Coffee Table," the commercial, which broke this month, promotes HP’s digital photo studio.
As the commercial opens, we see a young man sitting in his living room in front of his coffee table. The table consists of a large white hand with a round glass top resting upon the outstretched fingers.
Suddenly, the guy is struck by inspiration: He decides to make his unusual piece of furniture the subject of a photo shoot. Using a digital camera made by HP, he snaps photos of the coffee table out in a field, on the beach, on the ledge of a city building, by a carousel, on railroad tracks, in a water fountain and in a tunnel.
We also see clips of the enterprising artist at home, manipulating the pictures with his HP computer. A voiceover reads: "Point. Shoot. Create. The HP digital photo studio. How will you use it?"
The spot ends with a shot of a large book resting on the coffee table. It is titled My Coffee Table Book—which it literally is.
"The hero of the piece is that hand table," said Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ Simpson. Originally Simpson had envisioned using a different kind of coffee table—perhaps a stylish, contemporary design, maybe even one from his own home. Then he and the rest of the Goodby team realized they needed to find a more offbeat table, something funky that would stand out.
Sanders was scouting through furniture catalogues when he spotted a hand chair in the background of one of the photos. It caught his eye, so he and his team got the chair and made it into a table.
"The good thing about that hand was, when it moved through crowds and moved through the landscape, it just gave a bit more of an unusual and memorable element to the spot," Sanders related. "Also, HP is very much into inventing, and to me the hand was quite a powerful metaphor for what they’re doing."
Once he’d found the perfect table, Sanders needed to find the right guy to star in the ad. Rather than cast an actor, he sent scouts out to London-area design museums. Among the people they spotted was a scruffy young graphic designer who ultimately won the role. "I’d rather get someone to help generate ideas, as opposed to [my] just telling people to do things. I think that you believe someone who has got more of that kind of aesthetic and that look, rather than someone you dressed up as a part," opined Sanders. "A lot of the time during the shoot, we’d just say, ‘Here is the area. This is the little area we’re filming in. Go and do something with that table.’ "
In addition to lending the spot believability, the gentleman cast possessed another vital quality: strength. "The person we hired had to be able to lift the table," Sanders said, laughing. "It was quite heavy."
The director and his crew spent three days shooting the commercial on location in England. The city scenes were done in London; the beach scenes, in Brighton. However, the ad looks like it could have been shot in America.
Sanders enjoyed an incredible amount of freedom on the shoot. He was essentially given the concept and was allowed to roam freely to whatever locations he chose. "It wasn’t rigidly planned, which is what I wanted," he told SHOOT. "I wanted it to feel like that boy was just having the same kind of flow of ideas that I was."
The spot certainly has a free-flowing, artsy look and feel, which suits the concept. Simpson noted that Sanders has a fresh eye. "It’s not like he framed stuff up so front and center that it’s like, ‘Okay, dumb audience, look at this,’ " Simpson pointed out. "He lets you find things. I think that was really his strength."
In addition to allowing Sanders flexibility on location, the Goodby creatives took a "go with the flow" approach to the job. Case in point: The original copy for "Coffee Table" was tweaked to fit the cut that editor Hank Corwin of bicoastal Lost Planet presented to the agency. "The way Hank Corwin cut it was refreshing. I imagine we probably all thought of the story in a little bit more of a linear way, but then we gave the film to Hank and let him do his thing," reported Simpson. "I think the editing gets half the credit for the success of the spot."
Conceptually, the ad succeeds because—in a rather simple fashion—it shows people how they can actually make use of HP technology in their everyday lives. "It very much shows that thing that HP can offer that other people can’t, which is that entire solution: It’s the camera, it’s the PC and it’s the printer," Simpson stated, noting, "And the spot has some fun and wit to it, and some artiness."
Sanders was glad the agency chose to go with a low-tech concept. "I think once you start mentioning megabytes and pixelation and mouse maneuvers, people just go, ‘Oh, yeah, another boring flow of information,’ " he explained. "But people will remember that table, and they’ll remember Hewlett-Packard."
Speaking of that table, where is it now? Actually, no one seems to know. "It went back to the States, I believe," guessed Sanders. "I think it’s probably in Goodby." But Simpson isn’t so sure where it is. "I actually don’t know," he said. "I never know what happens to props."
