Judy Hu, GE’s global director for advertising and branding, deemed GE’s first foray into cinema advertising a success. The client got its feet wet on the big screen earlier this year with a humorous trailer, “Serengeti,” that was tied to the release of the feature film Evan Almighty.
Asked if she would again take the cinema ad plunge based on that positive experience, Hu paused for a moment, observing, “I wouldn’t say arbitrarily that we would add cinema to the mix going into another campaign. So much depends on the nature of the project. But we’d consider doing it again if it seemed as natural a fit as the one we enjoyed with Evan Almighty.”
For GE’s ongoing “ecomagination” campaign, Evan Almighty was a custom fit in what can often seem like an off-the-rack world. Hu explains, “Evan Almighty was produced in a way where the director [Tom Shadyac] was trying to be more environmentally efficient, encouraging crew to ride bicycles instead of driving cars, donating lumber and building materials used in the film to Habitat for Humanity, starting a real forest called Shady Farm in which trees were planted to zero out the carbon emissions caused by the making of the movie. And Universal started a website that people could go to in order to find out how to zero out their personal household emissions.”
Hu observes that these initiatives signaled a movie that was produced “in the spirit of ecomagination,” which is GE’s environmental friendly calling card. From this sprung creative from BBDO New York for a trailer designed to get the “ecomagination” message out in an entertaining and engaging way.
“Serengeti” takes us the to the wild where Evan Almighty is being shot. We are introduced to junior crew people with tongue-in-cheek titles (associate associate casting director, assistant casting associate) who tell us about the production and working with the animals.
One casting assistant relates that most of these animals have no acting experience–and the ones that do are trained in live theater, meaning they have “to bring their performance down a bit.” An associate associate casting director instructs a baboon to take a few steps back, have a seat and then show its teeth, which the animal does seemingly on cue. (Clearly, it’s footage that’s already been shot with the crew member giving direction after the fact, which makes it all the funnier.)
Another casting assistant asks a wildebeest for a nuanced performance, requesting that it be “flirtacious” and “coy.”
Next the crew folk explain to their wild kingdom ensemble that the production is environmentally conscious. A lion listens intently to the pro-ecology steps being taken to make the movie. An elephant proactively starts putting paper, plastic, aluminum and glass into the appropriate recycling bins. We further see that double-sided scripts are being used, and that bikes are the preferred mode of transportation for crew members.
A female assistant casting associate announces via megaphone to the animals that materials used for building and landscaping will be sent to Habitat for Humanity and that the movie’s carbon footprint is being “offset by the Conservation Fund.”
A super against a dark backdrop then informs us of the upcoming release of Evan Almighty. The spot then returns us on location where a junior crew guy tells ostriches to panic and disperse when he gives the signal. Right after they do just that, two parting supers appear, the first noting that Evan Almighty was “created in the spirit of ecomagination,” followed by the GE logo and the accompanying slogan, “imagination at work.”
“Serengeti” was directed by Paul Hunter of bicoastal/international HSI Productions. The DP was Jeff Cutter. Editing credits go to Sherri Margulies and Matt Shapiro of Crew Cuts, New York. Animation and visual effects were done at The Mill, New York.
Mixed bag
Agency veteran Don Schneider, who is BBDO New York’s executive creative director on the GE business, additionally served as art director on “Serengeti.” While he’s experienced in cinema advertising for Pepsi and now GE, Schneider still has mixed feelings about the medium.
“It’s an amazing opportunity, the reach is there. You have a captive audience,” relates Schneider. “And let’s face it–we’re all frustrated filmmakers who love the notion of having something shown on a 50-foot screen in theaters.
“But on the other hand,” he continues, “the audience is captive so the trailer better be good–or don’t do it at all. If it’s not good, you face backlash from the very audience you’re looking to reach out to and win over. When I am in a movie theater and pay $15 or whatever to get in, I don’t particularly like seeing something that is less than spectacular thrust upon me–that goes for the ad and the movie itself. I better not feel like I’m being marketed to. The ad better be entertaining.”
For Schneider, “Serengeti” worked because “ecomagination” is a concept that was in line with the manner in which Evan Almighty was being produced. The two dovetailed nicely and the feedback has been positive, he says.
“For their first time in cinema advertising, GE had an excellent experience,” relates Schneider. “The film and ecomagination meshed perfectly. People seemed to enjoy seeing ‘Serengeti,’ to the point where they liked seeing it over again. That’s a great qualitative [barometer], particularly when many people are predisposed to consider most any kind of advertising an intrusion in a movie theater.”
Quantitatively, “Serengeti” was seen on thousands of screens at 900-plus theaters across the United States, translating into 34 million impressions, says Hu. “We enjoyed the benefit of ‘added eyeballs,” she notes. “But it’s more than just extending our reach. It’s extending our reach in a way creatively that captures people’s imaginations.”
The BBDO New York creative team on “Serengeti” included chief creative officers David Lubars and Bill Bruce, exec creative director/art director Schneider, senior creative director/copywriter Peter Smith, director of television production Regina Ebel, assistant producer Filomena Lovecchio and senior music producer Melissa Chester.
Voyeur
As chronicled in both SHOOT and iSPOT, BBDO New York’s HBOvoyeur campaign broke new ground in several respects.
The initiative encompasses a building-sized “peep show” in Manhattan, content online at HBOvoyeur.com, mobile fare and a film titled The Watcher appearing on HBO On Demand.
The building projection is the image of an apartment building, on which we see Manhattan residents moving about in their dwellings, allowing viewers to be voyeurs into their private lives. The projection was on a building on NYC’s Lower East Side.
Online you can peer further into these people’s living spaces and lives, with a video featuring 30 actors in a dozen apartments. Delving deeper you see that some of these lives and goings on in the apartments are connected to one another. There is more than two hours worth of content on the website.
Banner ads, promotion on the HBO networks and a cinema commercial were among the components helping to drive traffic to the site. The cinema, trailer–like most of the Voyeur content–was directed by Jake Scott of bicoastal/international RSA (with additional material helmed by Chris Nelson, who’s with Little Minx, a Los Angeles-headquartered division of RSA). The DPs were Philippe LeSourd and Wally Pfister.
Santa Monica-based Asylum served as the visual effects house, with Tim Davies as VFX supervisor. Editor was David Heneger of Butcher, Santa Monica. Music house was Search Party, New York, with Scott Hardkiss serving as composer and Stephanie Diaz-Matos as music producer.
The Voyeur trailer opens on a cityscape, with different shots of apartment buildings. We then see a succession of windows, with fleeting glimpses into what’s going on in different apartments. Among the sights are a man and woman starting to disrobe, another couple embracing, one man eavesdropping with his ear against the wall, the other side of which a gun is being pointed against by another man.
Sprinkled in are telling supers. “Some rooms have a view…” That sentence is completed with “into the lives of others.” Successive supers invite us to “see what people do/when they think/ no one is watching.” The spot is then tagged with the site address HBOvoyeur.com.
BBDO’s director of integrated production Brian DiLorenzo served as executive producer of the Voyeur trailer. Lubars and Bruce were chief creative officers with Greg Hahn serving as executive creative director/copywriter. David Carter was senior creative director/art director and Michael Smith was senior creative director/copywriter. Jiffy Luen produced for BBDO New York.
Reflecting on the trailer, DiLorenzo explains that the voyeurism concept lends itself to cinema.
“It’s a nice fit creatively to have this message in theaters, particularly art houses where there are audiences that tend to have an affection for the HBO brand,” relates DiLorenzo. “On top of that, there’s something really nice from a creative perspective–for voyeurism, there’s nothing better than getting your message across in a dark room with a good sound system. It’s quite a fit.
“The trailer is intense but very spare,” he continues. “It creates a mood and is a far cry from some of that repurposed cinema stuff that also appears on television…Movie audiences are seeing something they wouldn’t expect in this cinema trailer, and that corresponds to branding HBO as being a place where you can count on seeing content that you wouldn’t expect to see anywhere else.”
