If you watch any of those home improvement shows that populate the airwaves these days, you can’t help but notice that the hosts and designers essentially assault homeowners, oftentimes strong-arming them into making “improvements” that aren’t so great. The same thing happens in a new series of comical Ace Hardware spots created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, and directed by Bryan Buckley of bicoastal/international Hungry Man that spoofs the home improvement show genre. One of the commercials entitled “Grass” is Top Spot of the Week.
Like all of the other ads in the campaign, “Grass” finds a homeowner returning from a trip to an Ace Hardware store holding the supplies that he intends to use for a specific project. In the case of “Grass,” the homeowner has just gotten back home from the store with sacks of remedies to apply to his patchy front lawn.
But as the homeowner exits his car, a crew from Shortcutz, a fictional home improvement shows, descends upon him, and the show’s cheesy host insists that he can give this guy a new green lawn. Before the man can even object, two crew members from the show rip his bags out of his hands, and the team gets to work.
By the end of the spot, the man does indeed have a new lawn–a spray painted lawn. It looks like the Shortcutz team really does take shortcuts. If only the man had stuck with his plan of using the products he bought at Ace Hardware to fix his lawn. “Don’t fall for Shortcutz. For the right products and advice, come to Ace–the helpful place,” a voiceover at the spot concludes.
THE SEED OF AN IDEA
The concept for “Grass” and the four other spots in the campaign–all directed by Buckley–came from the minds of Goodby’s Bob Winter and Steve Mapp, copywriter and art director, respectively. (They weren’t available for an interview at press time.)
Buckley was eager to work with the two creatives for a couple of reasons. First of all, they have great credentials, the director said. While Winter’s resume includes the “Real Men of Genius” campaign for Bud Light out of DDB Chicago, Mapp was one of the talents behind the Ikea “Lamp” spot (a previous SHOOT Top Spot) during a stint at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami.
Secondly, they came up with a fantastic concept for Ace Hardware. “I thought for Ace it seemed like such a bold and potentially different direction for them to go into,” Buckley shared. “So I was excited about trying to create the [Shortcutz] show and take Ace to a whole other place.”
Buckley wasn’t intimately familiar with the current home improvement show genre before taking on the Ace Hardware assignment, so he immersed himself in it. The director remarked on how different home improvement shows are today compared to show’s like This Old House that first became popular in the 1980s. “When you think back to home improvement stuff from a few years back, it was always a guy in a flannel shirt and that whole bit,” Buckley commented, “and now it’s not that at all. It’s Ty Pennington and that whole schmaltzy, ‘I care about you, but I’m the coolest guy around!’ “
Given the fact that these shows are now personality driven, Buckley’s first priority was to cast the right guy to play the Shortcutz host. He went with a good-looking actor named Carl Bresk. In constructing a backstory for the Shortcutz host, Buckley envisioned a guy who came up through modeling and probably didn’t know a thing about home improvement, and in keeping with that idea, Buckley gave the guy a very 1980’s wardrobe–think white Reeboks and tight pants and polo shirts. “[The Shortcutz host’s] best days were when he was 21 or 22 and was an underwear model,” Buckley mused. “The white Reeboks and tight pants and shirt worked for him then, so that’s what he’s in today. He’s locked into that look.”
With their host cast, Buckley and his crew, including DP Scott Henriksen, shot the Ace Hardware spots over the course of four days on location in Los Angeles. For “Grass,” they shot at a nondescript house with a bad lawn.
“Grass”–as well as the other spots–were shot on video in an effort to mimic the look of the home improvement shows we see on television. Shooting on video had the added advantage of giving Buckley the luxury of doing a lot of takes, which, in turn, gave editor Ian Mackenzie of Mackenzie Cutler, New York, some flexibility as to establishing tone.
Additionally, Buckley did takes with and without the Shortcutz helpers that we see dash into the scene, ripping the Ace Hardware bags out of the homeowner’s hands. That’s because those two characters weren’t in the original boards that the client had seen.
LAWN AND ORDER
All in all, the shoot went quite smoothly, Buckley reported, and everyone involved was a real pro–even the squirrel that we see walking about the lawn toward the end of the spot.
Especially impressive was the actor who played the Shortcutz host, according to the director. “He had never done anything comedic before,” Buckley noted of Bresk. “And he was so funny and flexible–he could do things like Jujitsu.” Bresk’s Jujitsu moves are on display in the opening of “Grass.” He makes quite an entrance into the scene.
Aside from Bresk as the obnoxious Shortcutz host, the lawn itself was a key character in the spot. Buckley and his crew really did spray paint it, experimenting with various shades of green before settling on the most appropriate unappealing one.
Thankfully for the actual homeowners, the crew removed the lawn at the end of the shoot and replaced it with nice new sod. That had to help take the sting out of having their home selected for a spot because of the pathetic lawn.
Actually, the homeowners weren’t insulted at all when they were approached, Buckley said. “Believe me,” Buckley said, “these people were like, ‘We’ll take the money and a new lawn!’ “
