This :30 opens with a middle-aged husband and wife giving prospective buyers, a younger couple, a tour of their home. It’s your typical real estate 101 ritual, with the sellers talking up the property, noting such details as the recent installation of copper pipes to ensure that the plumbing is in good working order.
The husband guides the would-be buyers through different rooms, offering a personal aside: "My father stays in here. He just turned 82."
"How nice," responds the young woman as the tour proceeds. The two couples turn the corner and get a surprising eyeful: the 82-year-old poppa walking out of the bathroom stark naked. Shock gives way to embarrassment and then nervous laughter from both couples. The elderly man, meanwhile, is oblivious to his unexpected company. "Dropped a crabcake in my shorts," he says in partial explanation of his unclad state. Supered black bars strategically conceal the senior citizen’s privates.
A voiceover interjects with the pitch: "You’ve got enough things to worry about when you’re trying to sell a home. We can take care of most of them."
This is followed by a supered logo for Right Home, a real estate brokerage firm with salaried agents. The voiceover concludes that Right Home is "the best thing to happen to real estate."
"Crabcake" takes us out of the comfort zone found in most real estate ads. It and a second spot—"Daddy" in which prospective buyers interrupt a teenage girl and her boyfriend in the midst of a sexual encounter—show people coming face to face with odd yet quite possible scenarios one could encounter while touring a home.
The offbeat concept came from a creative duo at West Hollywood, Calif., boutique agency Anti, Inc.: creative director/writer Scott Corbett; and art director Ed Schumacher.
"Crabcake" was produced by Venice, Calif.-based Ambush Productions. The :30 was directed by Red Grainge, with Roderick Jaynes and James Abke serving as producer and production manager, respectively. DP Joel Lipton shot the spot on location in Calabasas, Calif., with a hand-held camera to give a documentary feel to the unexpected moments.
Editor was Bob Mori of Cosmo Street, Santa Monica. Tatiana Derovanessian produced for Cosmo Street.
Nathan McGuinness and Darcy Tang of Asylum, Santa Monica, were Flame/Inferno artist and executive producer, respectively.
Paul Lear was the colorist and Liza Kerlan the executive producer at Pacific Data Post, Santa Monica.
POP Sound, Santa Monica, had a trio of contributors: sound designer Stephen Dickson; assistant sound designer Hunter Moore; and producer Jenny Warren.
