When one thinks of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, the first images that come to mind don’t necessarily involve him expertly racing a high-performance motorcycle, quoting poetry in a 15th century European courtyard or speaking fluent Italian.
But all of these scenarios figure into a recent adidas campaign featuring Bryant. The spots—"Speed," "Style," "Poetry" and "Italy"—represent a joint creative collaboration between two Portland-based ad entities: creative boutique Red Button; and Whatya Think, a two-year-old firm which handles design, marketing and some advertising for adidas and other sports-oriented clients. Whatya Think founder Peter Moore, who serves as creative director on adidas projects involving Kobe Bryant, contracted Red Button to create the ad campaign.
The spots were directed by Andrews Jenkins, a former in-house writer at adidas, and a co-founder of five-month-old Red Button. Santa Monica-basedStiefel+Company, which recently signed Jenkins to a deal for national commercial representation, was the lead production company on the job, which, according to Jenkins, was also produced by Portland-based Food Chain Films. (Jenkins is repped in the Pacific Northwest by Food Chain.)
"Speed" follows a helmeted motorcycle rider as he travels along rugged landscape and continues through the streets of a futuristic looking downtown Los Angeles. After swerving through traffic, he arrives in front of the Staples Center. At spot’s end, the biker takes off his helmet, revealing that he’s Bryant. In "Style," a bored Bryant waiting in an empty lobby amuses himself by first shooting baskets with wadded up paper, and then by dribbling a basketball.
"Poetry" depicts Bryant speaking lines of poetry as he sits on a stone wall in an Italian courtyard—a location just 10 feet away from the site of the Last Supper, according to Jenkins. "Italy" presents Italian teams playing a game of hoops in a gym, as English subtitles translate the dialogue (one player urges his teammate by saying,
‘C’mon, he’s not your girlfriend.’) The spot’s capper comes when Bryant unexpectedly converses in Italian with another player.
A recent addition to Stiefel’s directorial roster, Jenkins related that the spots were meant to show a rarely seen side of the Lakers guard, who grew up in Italy. "Each one of those spots is fairly abstract and really just a glimpse at part of his personality; that’s what we wanted to capture," said Jenkins. "You don’t normally get to see a lot of these aspects of a basketball player. He’s an intelligent, worldly guy for being 22 years old. Why not let the world know that he’s fluent in Italian, he’s a writer, he’s creative…he’s got many sides to him, so let’s show that instead of your usual cliched basketball ad."
Although a stunt rider doubled for him in "Speed," Bryant is a motorcycle enthusiast, which provided the concept for the spot. Earlier this year, Whatya Think talked to Bryant about his plans for this summer, according to Jenkins. "He mentioned he was going to Italy to hang out and he was going to buy himself an Italian high-performance motorcycle," related Jenkins. "As soon as he said that, all his agents started to cringe. So we thought, ‘Great, let’s do it.’"
Right out of college, Jenkins in ’93 got his start at Portland-based Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), where he spent nearly a year as a freelance writer working closely with agency co-founder/president/creative director Dan Wieden. Jenkins left W+K and spent several years freelancing for various Portland agencies, including Cole & Weber and Moffatt/ Rosenthal.
In ’97, Jenkins joined adidas, where he worked for the company’s then in-house creative director Moore, a veteran marketing executive who had previously served as creative director at Nike during its rise to prominence in the early and mid-1980s, and was the founder of Nike Design.
At adidas, Jenkins wrote copy for a large mix of adidas and adidas International projects: in-store promotional videos, Internet projects, in-cinema pieces, event-related films tied into sporting competitions such as the World Cup, as well as a handful of broadcast spots.
Eventually, Jenkins and another adidas creative, Devin Moore (who is Peter Moore’s son) launched what became adidas Film & Video; after leaving adidas, Jenkins and Devin Moore subsequently teamed to open Red Button.
"For sheer lack of budget," said Jenkins, "I wound up directing more and more of my stuff, and using it as a boot camp. So just because adidas was a fast-growing underdog, they allowed me to experiment. Eventually, through that experience, I found my love for directing."
Among his noteworthy in-house directing credits were last year’s adidas spots, which also featured Bryant. In contrast to this year’s meticulously boarded, stylized campaign, the four ’99 adidas spots helmed by Jenkins were documentary in feel. Created in-house at adidas, they revolved around Bryant’s interaction with a charming and cocky seven-year-old kid, Fuzzy Mitchum. One such spot, "The Kid," had Mitchum challenging his idol to a game of one-on-one, which Bryant accepts. Each shot of the kid boasting ("I got game"; "I got crossovers he’s never seen before") is punctuated by on-court action sequences revealing Bryant kicking the kid’s butt.
"Without any script, we went to Kobe and told him we were going to put him together with this kid to play a game of one-on-one," said Jenkins. "But whatever you do, do not let this kid score. The spots ended up being hilarious; the chemistry was great."
After hearing about Jenkins, Stiefel+Company president Frank Stiefel called in the work, which he deemed "fresh," and called the director a few months ago. Stiefel said, "You realize that rarely does somebody who is this early in the game have the opportunity to shoot as much as he had. The stuff he was doing for adidas took him to every part of the globe…[to shoot] some very, very complex special effects work as well as stuff that was comedic, and stuff that was just great-looking."
For Jenkins, it seemed a natural transition to become a full-time spot director. For the last year or so at adidas, he was directing everything that came across his desk and signed with Food Chain during the last couple of months of his adidas tenure.
After he got the call from Stiefel, Jenkins said he was also encouraged to take the leap by Food Chain director Marc Greenfield and Food Chain’s primary shareholder, director Craig Henderson. Both Portland-based directors are also represented nationally by Stiefel+Company.
"[Stiefel’s invitation] was surprising and, at the same time, the minute we started talking about it, it made sense; it made me more hungry for it," said Jenkins, who at press time had just wrapped a shoot for the Oregon Lottery spot out of Moffit/Rosenthal, produced by Food Chain. He is slated to directed a Saturn spot for Hal Riney & Publicis, San Francisco, that will be produced by Stiefel+Company.
