The crew members, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. "The Old Man’ll get us through," they said to one another. "The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell!"
"Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!" said Mrs. Mitty. "What are you driving so fast for?"
"Hmm?" said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "You were up to fifty-five," she said. "You know I don’t like to go more than forty…"
-From James Thurber’s The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty
It seems someone at Raleigh-based agency McKinney Silver has been reading his Thurber. In McKinney’s new campaign introducing Audi’s redesigned A4 sedan, a commonplace driving scenario takes on a Mitty-esque, epic feel. The :30 "Midnight Run" introduces the A4’s tagline, "Suddenly, Every Ride Is Exciting," with a suspenseful driving scene that is not what it first seems. Another :30, "Rearview," rounds out the television campaign.
In "Midnight Run," a man drives his Audi on what looks to be a clandestine, mafia-style sortie. "Right. I know. Cash only," the driver says furtively, as he tears off in his silver A4.
He arrives at the poorly lit entranceway of some desolate city establishment, where a mysterious trench coat-clad man stands by menacingly. The driver jumps out of the car, grabs his large, square package and drops it into the passenger seat.
That’s one pepperoni pizza to go.
It turns out Mr. Trench coat is just walking his dog, and Carmine’s pizza doesn’t take American Express, Visa, MasterCard or personal check: It’s a cash-only establishment.
Sam Bayer of bicoastal Mars Media directed the spot, with Linda Massey producing. Traci Norfleet was the executive producer.
Agency credits from McKinney Silver include copywriter Lisa Shimotakahara, producer Cathy Jenkins, art director Phillip Marchington and executive creative director David Baldwin.
SHOOT caught up with Baldwin and Marchington recently to chat about "Midnight Run."
SHOOT: The look and feel of this spot derived from the "Suddenly, Every Ride Is Exciting" concept, we take it?
Baldwin: The idea was to use the conventions of suspense films/thriller cinema and trick people into thinking that something is going on, when really all this guy’s doing is getting a pizza.
SHOOT: What ideas for this spot ended up in the recycling bin? Was our hero ever intended to grab anything other than a thick-crust pepperoni?
Baldwin: I think at first he was supposed to be picking up dry cleaning, but the pizza box proved to be easier and clearer to shoot.
Marchison: It was a pint of milk at one point.
SHOOT: Why did you choose Bayer to direct?
Baldwin: We wanted the spot to feel cinematic … and Bayer has an eye and a heart for that. We also wanted the spot to look aggressive, and Bayer was able to [do that for us].
Marchison: He shoots a bunch of angles … and gave us a lot of options. He was great to work with.
SHOOT: Did anything difficult or humorous happen during the course of the shoot?
Marchison: Well, we were in kind of a [sketchy] part of Downtown L.A., and when we washed down the street and alleyway we were shooting on, the smell was just a little funky … a little latrine-like. There was a dog that wouldn’t bark on cue. Nothing major, though.
