Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And in the case of Gift Exchange, a :30 for the Oregon Lottery out of Moffatt/Rosenthal, Portland, Ore., an office worker hopes his colleagues turn out to be beholders superficial enough to judge a book by its coveraor, more accurately, a gift by its wrapping.
Directed by Nick Egan of bicoastal/international The End, Gift Exchange opens on a guy standing by the office water cooler. The camera pans to reveal a notice posted on a nearby bulletin board: Holiday Party. Bring A Gift for the Gift Exchange.
Cut to the mans office, where hes crumpling sheets of paper from a yellow legal pad, awkwardly taping them up into a rough gift-shape, then dunking the gift in his coffee cup. A bright red ribbon tops the unsightly package. He examines it and smiles.
Cut to the party, where we see him plant his ugly package at the bottom of a large pile of attractively wrapped gifts. Dissolve to later, during the party, when the stack of gifts has dwindled down considerably. A woman approaches and grabs the last big gift from the pile, leaving our heros pathetic looking package. A boss-type character bellows out, And that leaves you, Stan.
With a smug look on his face, Stanaour scheming workerawalks up to the table and claims his package for himself. We hear Stan utter to himself a quiet but victorious Yesss! Inside the ugly wrapping paper is an Oregon Lottery Scratch-it.
The spot ends with a beauty shot of the unwrapped lotto ticket. An accompanying voiceover relates: Fun to giveabetter to get. Oregon Lottery Scratch-its for the Holidays.
The agency team included creative director/writer Rob Rosenthal, writer Carl Loeb, art director Will Chau and producer Monique Veillette.
For The End, Roger Hunt served as exec. producer, with Amy Faust producing. DP was Martin Coppen.
Offline editor was Declan Whitebloom of Brass Knuckles, West Hollywood and Venice, Calif. Online editor was George Mitchell of DownStream, Portland. Audio mixer was Eric Stolberg from Digital One, Portland.
Music was handled by a team from bicoastal Elias Associates that included creative director Jonathan Elias, composer Cary Haun and producer Ann Haugen.
aMillie Takaki
