Software company 3DO, Redwood City, Calif., has voluntarily pulled a TV commercial promoting the electronic game Battletanx off the air. The :30, Tready Bear, shows a cute, cuddly teddy bear being hunted down, terrorized, blasted, burned and crushed by an army tank. The bear is first seen minding his own business, comfortably nestled in a homes laundry room when a tank crashes through a wall, triggering a frenetic chase sequence. Lever Bros., New York, reportedly objected to the ad on the grounds that the bear was a Snuggles lookalike; Snuggles being Lever Bros. long-established spokescharacter for Snuggles fabric softener. Lever Bros.-which had not returned a SHOOT phone call at press time-contended that 3DO infringed on the trademarked Snuggles bear.
According to 3DO advertising director Joey Jodar, Conopco Inc. (doing business as Lever Bros.) initially filed for an injunction against 3DO to prevent the software firm from running Tready Bear. A federal judge in New York ruled against the injunction last month, related Jodar. But to avoid further costly litigation over the matter, continued Jodar, 3DO later opted to take the spot out of circulation.
During its run of four-plus weeks, Tready Bear gained notice in consumer and trade press, and helped generate brisk sales for Battletanx, a game that runs on the Nintendo 64 platform. Jodar reported that retail sales went up 300% and that 3DO thus far had sold in excess of 200,000 units. The company expects that tally to go up to 250,000 by the end of March.
Another beneficiary of the darkly comedic ads success is its director, Chris Milk. A San Francisco area resident, Milk was in Los Angeles at press time, talking with several production houses that began courting him after seeing Tready Bear.
Milk, a partner in Spoon Fed Films, San Francisco, was involved in the conceptual process for the spot. Milk first met the aforementioned Jodar when the latter was based in Belmont, Calif., and working for Canadian educational publisher Thomson Learning. While at Thomson, Jodar employed Milk to helm some humorous training films. Later, after having moved to 3DO which had started to handle its advertising in-house, Jodar again linked with Milk. The duo teamed with another Spoon Fed partner/ director Carlos Silvio and freelance writer Jeff Buchanan to develop the Tready Bear premise. Milk related that they conducted a focus group with the key demographic, teenage boys, and found that the target audience didnt want some regurgitated slick vision of themselves using a product. Instead they wanted something rebellious.
Milk noted that advertising for toys and household products often runs in the same afternoon time slots. So the idea of an ad opening as if it were a household products pitch and then turning into a raucous, funny, bat-out-of-hell pursuit promoting Battletanx added a twisted dimension thats proved appealing to the 12- to 18-year-old male demographic.
Milk opted to have San Francisco-based Complete Pandemonium produce the spot, largely because of its experience in jobs combining live action and heavy visual effects. The company-headed by executive producer Stelio Kitrilakis-has, said Milk, great, established relationships with effects vendors. Among those vendors is digital effects studio Western Images, San Francisco. Under Milks direction, DP Matthew D. Smith shot live action plates of the tank running amok and blue screen of the bear. Western Images provided on-set effects supervision by digital effects artist Bob Roesler and technical director Jerry Castro. Western also handled creative editorial and extensive compositing, embellishing the shots with explosions and adding elements to the background plates to enhance the effect of the carnage wrought by the tank.
Currently seeking a permanent L.A. spot house roost, Milk explained that he feels the need to be based in Southern California in order to raise his industry profile and move up to the next level. Milk said that for the time being, hes still informally handled by Red Sky, San Francisco, a shop he joined last year primarily on the strength of a Sprite spec spot, Extreme Is Dead, which made SHOOTs The Best Work You May Never See gallery (SHOOT, 2/20/98, p. 15) and went on to win a Gold Clio in the student category later that year.
Kari Albert was line producer on Tready Bear for Complete Pandemonium. The Western Images contingent consisted of digital effects artists Roesler and Orin Green, technical director Castro, editor Alan Chimenti, assistant editor Lee Gardner and producer Lisa McNamara.
3DO creative credits go to director of advertising/copywriter Jodar, writer Buchanan, and art directors Milk and Silvio.
