Christian Hoagland may not have won any industry awards yet, but if there’s a prize for sheer nerve, it should have his name already engraved on it.
Hoagland, who is with Redtree Productions, Boston and New York, is the director responsible for some of the more controversial ads in the "Truth" campaign for the American Legacy Foundation (ALF). The ALF is a group formed by 46 state attorneys general, and was born as a result of the settlement with the tobacco industry over state lawsuits filed against the tobacco companies. The ALF account, valued at $150-$250 million annually, is serviced by a number of agencies, with Arnold Communications, Boston, heading up the effort. Other shops working on the ALF account include: Crispin Porter+Bogusky Advertising (CPB), Miami; Burrell Communications, Chicago; Los Angeles-based Imada Wong; and Bromley Communications, San Antonio, Texas.
The guerilla-style spots—"Body Bags" and "Lie Detector"—helmed by Hoagland out of Arnold initially didn’t make it to the major networks, and the ALF pulled the ads just three days after they broke in February, when Philip Morris threatened legal action. (However, a version of "Body Bags" received a reprieve of sorts when NBC decided to air it during the Summer Olympic Games.)
Of the two ads, the most affecting is "Body Bags," which shows a group of high school-aged kids placing 1,200 body bags around an unidentified tobacco company’s headquarters to represent the number of deaths caused by cigarettes each day. Originally, the concept was to draw 1,200 chalk outlines around the building, explains Hoagland, but it was eventually decided that body bags would have more impact.
The spot was actually shot outside of Philip Morris’ New York offices, and although the location was not revealed in the ad, shooting there required maintaining a low profile. Hoagland says he was well aware of the potential for controversy going into it.
"I knew I probably wouldn’t be doing another Kraft or Miller spot," says Hoagland, referring to two Philip Morris-owned properties. "I think everybody had a sense that we were going up against a big corporation that has a lot of money and a history of taking people to court. Also we knew we were going to try to push the limits and be in their face. … Going in we definitely knew we were going to be bothering some people, and we made every attempt to make sure everything was legal."
Hoagland explains that getting the shoot to go smoothly required a great deal of preparation. Much of the camera work was done with hidden body cameras on the youngsters, so he trained the participants in using the technology. "I tried to teach the kids how to tell a story, how to follow the action of what’s going on. Look at the people, look at the bag when you carry it," he says.
"We tried to keep everything under the radar so almost all the cameras are hidden," explains Hoagland, although there were a couple of roving cameras at the shoot. "We basically operated just like you see it on the commercial. There’s really an energy to it, a rush to get everything in, because we didn’t know what [the people inside of] Philip Morris were going to do."
"Lie Detector" features a group of teens attempting to gain entry to a tobacco company in an attempt to administer a lie detector test to a VP of marketing. Then there’s also "Shredder" which shows the kids standing outside of the tobacco company’s office with an enormous shredder—to help the executives shred incriminating documents, memos and even entire file cabinets. And "Hypnosis," features a van with a Truth label on it driving around tobacco executives’ homes, with a loudspeaker blaring a hypnotic tape encouraging them to get new jobs that they won’t be ashamed of.
After all that work, Hoagland admits it’s very frustrating that the
