While Kinka Usher has never delivered a baby, the director has delivered an endearing new spot called "Birth" for Apple. Created by TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, the ad finds a father-to-be eagerly snapping digital photos as his wife gives birth to their first child. In the process, viewers get to see just how simple Apple’s iPhoto technology is to use.
The :60 opens in a hospital operating room where a woman is grunting and groaning as she strains to give birth. Her husband—clad in surgical scrubs—documents the occasion by continuously taking photographs. Meanwhile, he attempts to soothe his wife. "It’s OK, honey," he assures her. "Visualize the green pastures with the white fluffy clouds."
Still intent on his picture-taking, he adds distractedly, "OK, honey, don’t forget to breathe."
At this point, she shoots him a scornful look as if to say, "Shut up, already!"
Finally, the baby is born. The doctor holds out the child for Mom and Dad to see, declaring, "Baby boy!"
Cut to Dad in the hospital cafeteria. He plugs his digital camera into his Apple iBook computer, transfers the images from the camera to the laptop and begins to organize them. A male nurse peeks over his shoulder to check out the pictures and says, "Congratulations, Dad."
Using the computer mouse, the proud new papa scrolls through thumb-size images of the dozens of photos he has taken. With a click and a drag, he moves an image into a folder called "Jack’s Birth."
Next we see Dad entering Mom’s hospital room; she is holding the baby. Dad settles in a chair next to her bed, takes his newborn infant in his arms and says, "Look, I wanna show you something." Dad proceeds to treat Jack to a slideshow, featuring highlights of the big day.
One photo finds Mom seated behind the wheel of a car. "This is your mother on the way to the hospital. She had to drive because I was too nervous," Dad explains as Mom smiles.
Then there is a shot of Mom’s luggage. "These are her suitcases. You really think she needs all those bags?" Dad asks his son.
The photo tour continues with images of the baby’s grandparents, both sporting shades. It culminates with a shot of Mom cradling the infant just after giving birth. "And that’s your Mom holding you for the first time. Look how handsome you are. I think you look like me," Dad says softly. By this time, little Jack has dozed off.
The screen turns black with white lettering: iPhoto. Then the Apple logo appears as a voiceover says, "iPhoto. Shoot it. Save it. Share it."
TBWA/Chiat/Day senior partner/creative director Duncan Milner noted that copywriter Maya Frey and art director Moe Verbrugge came up with the concept for the spot. Then the creative team met with Usher to flesh out the premise. "But it stayed pretty pure to Maya and Moe’s idea," Milner related.
Of course, a digital camera can be used to capture all sorts of scenes. So why choose to focus on the birth of a baby? "The birth provided a good scenario to demonstrate the product," answers Verbrugge. "In a digital camera world, there is the immediacy of being able to take images and—with this new technology—being able to download and organize them, and have an end product to share with people."
For Usher—who also helmed Apple’s "Beat," another recent Top Spot—if there was one major challenge in shooting this job, it was to make the birth realistic. "I did research on it," reports the director, who isn’t a father himself. "I talked to some Lamaze families, and I asked a lot of people who have children [about] what’s real and what’s not real." Usher also hired a pediatric nurse to serve as a consultant on the set of the shoot, which was DP’d by Barry Peterson.
Two-week-old triplets were cast in the role of the newborn. There was also a fake baby on set, but it wound up not being used during the two-day shoot. "As good as it was, it looked pretty fake," Milner said, laughing.
The tiny triplets themselves—each of whom was allowed to spend no more than 20 minutes on the set per day—were amazingly convincing as the infant. In order to make them appear as though they’d just been born, "We covered the babies with grape jelly and vanilla yogurt," reveals Verbrugge. "But some takes were a little too gory. We had too much jelly."
The concoction also made the babies slippery—but they got through the shoot unscathed. All of the scenes were filmed at Long Beach Hospital, Long Beach, Calif., lending an authenticity to the production. As for the still images, Usher shot those himself at a house near the hospital.
And, by the way, if the guy who plays the dad in "Birth" looks familiar, you may have seen him in other commercials. In fact, the scruffy young actor, Esteban Powell, has appeared in several spots directed by Usher, including ads for Volkswagen and Mountain Dew. In explaining why Powell was the man for this job, Usher said, "We’re always looking for that Apple guy—a smarter, thinking-out-of-the-box kind of person, and he fit that mold."
"Birth" does not feature a music track. "We just wanted it to feel real, which is why we didn’t put any music behind the spot," explained Frey. This omission is of note, given that music certainly could have been used in the commercial: iPhoto technology allows users to create photographic slide shows complete with background music. But the creative team chose not to showcase that feature. "It was very much a decision not to do that, because we didn’t want to manipulate emotions [with music]," Milner pointed out. There was, indeed, a fine line to walk in producing this spot. "We wanted it to pull at the heartstrings without getting too sappy," he added.
Usher shared the agency’s resolve to keep "Birth" from turning syrupy sweet. "These commercials can get really sappy really quickly," he acknowledged. "So the thing to do was to give it a sense of truth, and I think we found that."
