Back in January, Peter Cline, a managing partner and the head of production at Amsterdam-based 180, returned stateside, relocating to Southern California to set up 180 LA. His pedigree includes having been a senior agency producer at TBWAChiatDay, New York, a senior producer on Microsoft and Nike at Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore., head of production at W+K, Amsterdam, then becoming a key player in helping to establish W+K, New York, before joining 180, Amsterdam, in 2000.
His work over the years has received assorted accolades but arguably his most notable–or at the very least one of his signature spots–is Nike’s classic “Good vs. Evil,” in which star soccer players battle demons amidst the ruins of Rome’s Coliseum. Out of W+K, Amsterdam, “Good vs. Evil” was one of the entries that helped Tarsem of bicoastal/international @radical.media earn the Directors Guild of America Award as best commercial director of ’96.
Fast forward to today and Cline’s career–along with the nature of his work at 180 LA–underscores the profound changes that agency producers have had to weather and adapt to in order to stay relevant.
“At times I feel like a dinosaur, ‘the big spot merchant,’ based on work like ‘Good vs. Evil,’ a piece which I love to this day,” related Cline. “Like all of us, I find myself caught in a world of having to change my abilities and my acumen but it is an exciting time. I say to all my producers on a regular basis, ‘You better keep retooling your skill sets.’ Five years ago, I would have never guessed that things would change this much but I love the confluence of content and marketing, the emergence of the interactive space, the wondrous challenges it all presents. We have the opportunity to tell bigger, richer stories across multiple platforms. We have different and more expressive paintbrushes to use creatively across interactive, TV, print, even in retail and in product design.”
“Brotherhood” Cline’s latest endeavor is adidas’ “Basketball is a Brotherhood” campaign launching Team Signature footwear and consisting of television, digital, mobile, print and retail components, each guiding consumers to the campaign’s centerpiece–an 11-episode web series at www.adidasbasketball.com. The creative driving traffic to the website encourages consumers to text in and join the “Brotherhood.” Participants then receive voicemail messages from the featured NBA stars inviting them to experience “Brotherhood” first hand on the adidas website. The campaign’s emphasis on digital content recognizes web and mobile phones as the primary tools that kids now use to communicate, gather information and help form their opinions. The media rollout covers the United States, Asian and European markets and extends through the end of ’07.
Campaign content was captured this past summer at a basketball camp for 12 young players. While the youngsters knew the camp was run by adidas, they didn’t know that they would eat, sleep, breathe and learn what basketball is really about alongside NBA all-stars Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Gilbert Arenas, Dwight Howard, Chauncey Billups and Tracy McGrady. The lessons learned were both on and off the court, with Garnett and Arenas for instance talking about their early travails as youngsters, Garnett noting that helping get through being away from his friends and family at an early age was “expressing myself on canvas,” meaning writing messages from the heart on his shoes, which now carry tributes to the late basketball and baseball stars Malik Sealy (Garnett’s former teammate with the Minnesota Timberwolves) and Kirby Puckett, respectively.
The films were all unscripted, though “we had some leaping-off points,” said Cline. “These were heartfelt moments in the careers of stars like T-Mac [McGrady] and Garnett that they talked about off the cuff. It’s a side of these guys that people rarely if ever get the chance to hear and what made it all the more special was that they were telling these stories to kids in camp. You could see in the kids’ eyes what it meant to them to meet and get to know these star players, and in the process see them come together as a team and as part of the ‘Brotherhood.’
“This is part of the campaign we’ve been building in which we don’t put athletes up on a pedestal,” continued Cline. “Instead we have tried to put our star guys alongside our viewers and make them approachable rather than deifying them.”
Multi-tasking
The adidas “Brotherhood” campaign line “We Not Me” reflects the importance of being a team and applies to Cline and his collaborators, which included the client, his fellow 180 creatives, freelance agency producer Mary Ellen Duggan, the athletes, the youngsters, director Paul Hunter of HSI Productions and San Francisco-based digital content agency EVB.
“That’s a big part of how the agency producer’s role has changed,” observed Cline. “You not only have to be a great producer of TV and print but you have to help manage a production circus that also encompasses interactive, retail, making-of films and in some cases product design. It’s a hyper-extended role for the producer, placing a lot of problems and concerns on your plate.”
Cline noted that interactive scheduling is slightly different than TV and print. “You have to develop work sooner than normal. Forget about air dates. You’re working off a more arbitrary date so that a partner agency like EVB can integrate it into their world, plus it has to be integrated into the retail environment. You’ve got to get it done early enough so that the creative can be infused into their world and other worlds, becoming fully integrated. Your hope is that your creative work can inspire your partner agency’s creative efforts and fuel collaboration on the actual execution. And there are times, though not with this adidas project, when your work can influence the actual product design, which again shows how many more paintbrushes we potentially have to work with.”
With Cline’s major ads over the years like Nike’s “Good vs. Evil,” Reebok’s “Silver Surfer” and Coke’s “Fruitopia,” the common thread was that they all were entertainingly engaging. And that’s the major prerequisite for content today if you want consumers to seek you out. “Plus those big commercials haven’t gone away,” said Cline. “There’s still a real need for them in today’s marketplace. What’s great is you can build upon them or do even longer form stories on the web and other outlets.”
Cline even mused in the what-if realm about “Good vs. Evil” hitting the scene today. “It could have been the springboard for more across different platforms. I remember there were two other spots we were supposed to do and couldn’t afford back then. But today we might have been able to realize more work on the web, to blow up the idea even further by applying it to other sports. The opportunities for producers today are that much more varied.”
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