OfficeMax, with the help of DDB Chicago, “punk’d” a bunch of Tuckahoe Middle School students for its latest back-to-school campaign. Breaking tradition with 30-second ads, OfficeMax instead created a 60-minute original content television special in partnership with Hollywood Records, teen heartthrob Jesse McCartney and ABC Family.
In Schooled, directed by Henry-Alex Rubin (of “Murderball” fame), viewers have a front row seat for a prank played by parents, school officials and McCartney on a group of eighth graders who recently graduated from the Eastchester, N.Y. school. They are asked to take a grueling oral and written exam to be allowed to proceed to high school as expected. They are told that if they fail, they will be admitted to eighth-and-a-half grade instead. But they are really being set up for a private concert by McCartney.
“OfficeMax wanted to create something that would generate its own audience for back-to-school, which is a crowded time of year. You can get lost in the shuffle in terms of 30-second ads,” said Vinny Warren, creative director of DDB Chicago.
DDB brought the idea of the show to OfficeMax and they liked it. “It’s a matter of capturing people’s attention in any way we can. Advertising agencies and clients are trying to challenge themselves to deal with the fact they have a more fragmented audience.”
OfficeMax plans to capture its teen audience online as well. The show, which at press time was scheduled to air on the ABC Family Channel on Aug. 17, will also reach Google Video users at video.google.com/schooled. There they will find a customized feature page with added footage, as well as information about OfficeMax’s back-to-school gear and McCartney. The Web site points out OfficeMax locations nationwide that now include “Creation Stations,” stocked with a new line of notebook covers, paper and dividers so students can customize their own notebooks. OfficeMax stores are also offering a limited edition DVD that will feature footage from Schooled and McCartney singing songs from his new album to be released in September.
In advance of the debut on ABC Family, promos for the show ran this week on the network. Additionally banner ads promoting the show went up on Google last week.
THE SETUP Sixty-five crew members working round the clock for several days set the stage for the show’s central prank. Professional actors were brought on board to play the test officials from the pretend SMAT, the Standard Mental Assessment Test. On test day, the officials share frightening statistics with the already anxious students–more than 41 percent of kids currently in high school do not have proper junior high school educations.
During the individual oral exams, puzzling questions are fired at the students such as: How many results would get if you googled Google? And if you are driving at the speed of light and you turn your headlights on, what do you see?
Later, the students all gather for the written portion of the exam in the gymnasium, A few minutes into the test, the sound of drums breaks the silence. The “proctor” flips out because he can’t believe a band is allowed to practice at the school during testing time. Little by little, a moveable gymnasium wall opens up to reveal Jesse McCartney, who yells to the students, “You’ve just been schooled.” The students, especially the girls, respond with a major meltdown of screams and applause and rush the stage.
Warren said the toughest part of the project was not knowing whether it was going to manifest itself as watchable TV. “We only had one shot at doing it. The kids had to buy it one hundred percent. From a TV point of view, they had to be genuinely surprised.
“It was quite nerve-wracking. As you get closer to doing it you’re like, ‘Are we crazy doing this?’ he said laughing. “If it didn’t work, we would’ve had nothing.” He admitted they actually spent as much time preparing for it not working. The alternative might have been to fake it. “It wouldn’t have been nearly as genuine. You can’t fake that hysteria.”
TEAM EFFORT
Warren gives a lot of credit to bicoastal production company Smuggler for making everything run smoothly. “And Henry-Alex Rubin, the director. Having done documentaries, he knows what seems real isn’t always real and he was really good at making sure we got all of the stuff we needed,” related Warren.
Success also stemmed from the strong relationship among the senior OfficeMax marketing team, Warren and account director Norm Bilow.
“There are probably clients at DDB who are spending money with entertainment oriented properties that we as an agency don’t know about,” said DDB Chicago executive producer David Rolfe. “This is an example of when we did know about it because OfficeMax included us in the process, and we were able to come up with something groundbreaking and useful from an integrated standpoint.
“This will be a compelling case because of its online presence and running it in its long form. It also has viral potential ’cause it involves a celebrity. If someone is searching for Jesse, like we know millions of kids do, they’ll find this and OfficeMax.”
Rolfe said what was particularly special about creating branded entertainment was the huge team effort and evolution of roles within DDB. “For instance, Norm is the account director. But his title on the show will be creator. That’s noteworthy. You need a team effort to create something like this. Everyone has to be open to crisscrossing roles.”
Schooled concludes with OfficeMax donating $80,000 in gift cards to the middle school, which suffered major budget cuts this year. The last frames show school principal Carl Albano shopping with the gift cards for a year’s worth of school supplies at OfficeMax with the students, allowing the school to save money as well as some of its clubs and activities.
“This was one of those win, win, win projects,” said Warren.
