French Dictionary," a new spot for the Low Rise line of jeans by Levi Strauss & Co., has a car chase, a love story, an underwater scene and even some character development—all in 60 seconds. The ad, New York agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s (BBH), first U.S. outing for Levi’s since winning the account earlier this year, comes off more like a short film than a commercial. Director Ivan Zacharias, out of Smuggler, New York, and Stink, London (U.S. and European representation, respectively), lends his talents to further smudge an already blurry line between advertisement and entertainment.
While brand name products commonly make paid appearances in feature films, spot makers are inverting the paradigm by borrowing techniques from the movies to showcase products. In this model, the sales pitch is toned down while the art is turned up. Characters are established first and then the product is rendered cool by association. "It was really a two-fold thing," said Thomas Hayo, BBH group creative director. "Make it relevant and interesting for young people and within that, create a communication for the low rise jeans."
For "French Dictionary," DP Jan Velicky paints a gritty, cinematic scene for a client wanting to associate its jeans with a young, risk-taking crowd leading exciting lives. The spot opens, rather suddenly, on a nighttime car chase through an industrial harbor setting. A ’70s Pontiac driven by a handsome but unkempt young man tries to outrun a menacing SUV sporting blackened windows and powerful spotlights across the roll bar. How we got to this point is any viewer’s guess.
The young man looks concerned as he checks the rearview mirror. His beautiful brunette counterpart in the passenger seat also appears worried as she cranes her neck for a peek out the back window. At the hands of editor Filip Malasek from Final Cut, New York, the scene is quick with urgency but the music—curiously, a dark love song titled Playground Love by the French band Air—is juxtaposed, hinting at something more than just a car chase.
The automobile spins out in a cloud of dust and heads in a different direction. The young man makes a hard right, stops quickly and backs the car into a dark corner. Before reaching a complete stop, the headlights are doused. The SUV in pursuit races past as the young couple peers over the dashboard. Once out of danger, they laugh in relief.
We cut to the couple pushing the car towards the dark harbor waters, presumably to ditch the evidence. Having built enough momentum, they stop and watch it roll in. With smiles on their faces, they walk to the harbor’s edge to witness it sink. But the young man’s smile fades and he wistfully looks down into the ripples. A moment later his body shoots through the water and he begins to swim down to the car. From the driver’s side, we see the man pull himself through the opposite window and begin hunting around the interior. Under the seat, he finds what he is looking for—a small object we are not allowed to see, which he tucks into the back of his jeans. He swims back to the surface much to the relief of his alluring girlfriend. Dripping wet, he rejoins her and their arms slip comfortably around each other’s waists. The girl says the only line of dialogue in the entire spot—a French phrase for, roughly, "What did you find down there?" But he does not answer, probably because he doesn’t understand. The punch line is a close up on the back of the young man’s jeans where the top of a French dictionary pokes out over the waistline. The camera backs off to a wide shot as the couple walks away into the night. Black bars resembling a letterbox grow from the top and bottom of the screen and close in tighter and tighter. They stop when all that is revealed is the waist of the young man and the pivotal book. This last sliver of the scene is filled in with white and the Levi’s logo fades in along with the slogan, "Levi’s Low Rise Jeans. Dangerously Low."
The Low Down
"For a company like Levi’s," Hayo explained, "I think you have to put out spots that feel bigger and more cinematic than just your normal, quirky, thirty-second ads. We treated these ads like short films."
BBH creatives were charged with revitalizing the Levi’s brand among the 18-24 year-olds—a group the company has lost sight of over the last five years. "When we did some research in the beginning of the project," Hayo explained, "[we learned] the problem is with the younger audience. Strangely enough, when we looked at the research data, a lot of the younger people didn’t really think of Levi’s as a very cool brand."
Despite being the inventors of blue jeans, Levi Strauss has been losing market share in the highly coveted young demographic over the last few years. BBH had the ambitious challenge of reestablishing its client’s name with America’s youth. The strategy outlined by agency creatives was to associate the jeans with a rebellious crowd reminiscent of 1950s America.
"It was a little counter-culture when James Dean and Brando started to wear jeans," said Hayo. "We wanted to create a world that is about people who are out there taking risks and are a little more daring. And this is perfect for Low Rise jeans because the cut itself is lower so you expose more of yourself. Wearing those jeans is all about being a little more daring."
But with all of the plot elements and character development, a product still had to be sold. Since BBH and Levi’s were appealing to a younger crowd, it was agreed that the best approach was a subtle one. The agency and production team agreed to walk a fine line between film and advertising by only showing the jeans when it fit the action.
"It was an ongoing conversation," said Smuggler executive producer Brian Carmody. "How do you integrate seamlessly and still make a point? If you go too far with the product, then you lose the film."
"The goal was to have those features in there without sacrificing the integrity of the story," related Hayo. "It was something we were focused on from the beginning—even at script stage. We were looking for great places to show off the product from different views—back, front, the stitching, the label, etc. It is a matter of degree—how much you show and at what point you show it—because you want people to notice it but not to feel like you are forcing something down their throats."
Stink producer Nick Landon also remembers many conversations about the line between advertising and entertainment. "I would say that overall, product shots were what was talked about most—that and casting," said Landon. "There was quite a lot to pack in but it doesn’t feel too forced. It took a lot of effort to cut it. We had to decide whether to sacrifice one shot over another."
Casting problems were due, in large part, to the tight schedule of rising star, Mexican-born Gael García Bernal who recently starred in the films Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien. "We had to fit between two features for him and we just managed to slot it in," recounts Landon.
Despite the tight schedule, Bernal’s performance was essential to the success of the spot. "I always think the biggest challenge is to get casting right," said Hayo. "Even if all the action works out, it still falls flat if you don’t believe the characters and if you don’t believe the performances. For example, his look when he realizes that he forgot something—that had to communicate so much in such little time. I think that no matter how good a script is, it lives and dies with the cast. So in that respect, we were really happy to get Gael."
With cast and concept secured, all that needed to be done was establish a budget and stay within it. This, of course, came with its own set of challenges. "It was an awkward shoot," said Carmody about the nine days on location in South Africa. "We were in Johannesburg, which is a pretty urban, hardcore town. It was financially very challenging, which is why we shot down there. There was a lot of agency pressure and the client really wanted to step it up." According to Carmody, the location saved them a fortune in production costs with a South African day costing $40,000 to $50,000 versus $200,000 to $250,000 a day in the U.S.
"The shoot was great but it was very tough," added Hayo. "We were shooting in water tanks; we submerged cars into water; we pushed cars into the harbor and had to pull them back up, so it was quite challenging. It was crucial to choose the right director in order to bring something like this to life because you need someone who can tell a story like that but at the same time pays attention to the characters and makes sure that they don’t get lost in a dramatic story sequence."
The Air soundtrack (also featured in the film The Virgin Suicides) gets a good portion of the credit for helping the viewer maintain focus on the young couple. "The music was a very conscious decision," explained Hayo. "All the tracks in contention actually countered the action. With the car chase you would expect something fast-paced and crazy. But by juxtaposing it to a more romantic and dreamy track, it just gives the film a whole different spin. For me, even though it is action-involved, it is ultimately quite a romantic story. If you look at films and music, it is interesting to see what happens if you don’t go the obvious route and juxtapose things because it puts a different spin on it."
In the end, however, the campaign is about how low the waistline can go. Jeans, once primarily concerned with hugging the posterior, are now focused on almost partially exposing it. "We developed a whole bunch of scripts and in all of them, it was essential that there was an element tucked into the waistline," said Hayo. "The idea was to showcase that lower waistline and integrate it into the story nicely."
The ending uses a visual tool to draw further attention to the lower waist and impress upon the viewer a design element that crosses over into other elements of the overall campaign. "We were looking for an end device that ties that campaign together across the board," added Hayo. "The print ads all have this white stripe that comes out of the exposed skin at the waistline and the in-store displays feature a similar look. But in ‘French Dictionary’ it was important that it didn’t interfere with the integrity and the filmic nature of the spots. We really wanted something that was tasteful and felt as cinematic as the entire spot. So the letterbox coming down seemed like a perfect solution."
"French Dictionary" is the product of a challenging shoot in foreign lands, pressure from an agency concerned about a new client, budgetary constraints, tight scheduling and casting challenges. However, all of this did not seem to stop those involved from enjoying the experience. "It was good fun though," said Landon. "It was an adventure, like a mini-film." Hayo, after it was all finished, was also very pleased with the results. "It is great to see it come to life," he said, "because it shows you how smartly it was executed by Ivan and how nicely it was put together by Filip [Malasek]." Carmody, keenly aware of the stiff challenges his company faced in making "French Dictionary," still summed it up nicely. "Given everything involved, they ended up in a really good place."
