There were some inherent challenges when it came to creating the campaign for Legoland California, the state’s first new theme park in 25 years. For one, the park hadn’t been built yet, so it couldn’t be captured on film. And even if such a shoot had been possible, Legoland wouldn’t feature the thrills-and-spills attractions found at other nearby parks. "Legoland is not necessarily a park that translates that well to TV," says asher&partners’ creative director Bruce Dundore, whose Los Angeles agency beat out assorted others for the $5 million to $10 million account in ’98. "A rollercoaster that goes 70 miles per hour-you can show that. But no one’s lips flap at Legoland."
So Dundore and his team took a different approach; they decided to shoot teaser spots that, literally, plant the seed for the park. "Pre-Seed" directed by Eugene Yelchin, then of Palomar Pictures, Los Angeles (he has since joined Dektor Films, Hollywood), was shot on a sound stage and shows children snatching colorful, glowing Legos from a stormy night sky as if they were shooting stars. In the second spot, "Seed," also directed by Yelchin, the children bury the glowing Legos in the ground, and dinosaurs, castles and other phantasmagoria-all made of Legos-sprout. The tagline: "Legoland is coming."
Dundore says the campaign focuses on "a sense of wonder." The message, he continued, was that Legoland "was going to be a very special place, and it had to be communicated specially. [Legoland offers] a shared experience between the adult and the child that is like the reading of a story. I really wanted to portray something fable-istic."
The campaign, according to Dundore, has created within California a 96-percent rate of awareness of the park’s opening, and helped drive a first-month attendance that exceeded expectations.
Future spots will air in California and in some neighboring states; however there are no plans to take the campaign national because, as Dundore explains, "No one’s going to travel to Southern California for Legoland. But they will plan a trip to San Diego, at which point the travel agent has a nice list of activities in the area and Legoland is on that list."
Legoland has arrived, and also coming soon is asher&partners’ next anti-tobacco campaign for the State of California’s Department of Health Services. The high profile, successful six-year-old account is credited with helping to decrease smoking in the state by 40 percent. Last year’s "Impotence" spot, directed by Breck Eisner of Palomar, was named one of the Hallmarks of ’98 by the New York Times. The agency’s "Voicebox Smoker" spot directed by Palomar’s Nick Brandt-in which a woman with a tracheotomy smokes a cigarette through the hole in her throat-also garnered widespread attention. But Dundore insists that their best anti-tobacco work is yet to come. While he couldn’t elaborate on specifics, he said the forthcoming campaign, tentatively due out late this summer, "is one of the best campaigns we’ve ever done. It understands. It’s finally a synthesis of everything we have learned."
Alternatives
Dundore has learned a few things himself over the years. Originally he aspired to be a cartoonist, but after several years of submitting his work to "every publication in the world" to no avail, he gave up and began exploring alternatives. The future creative director had been supporting himself by selling art after college, but a growing interest in the ad business led him to sign up at New York’s School of Visual Arts.
Dundore landed his first job at the New York office of McCann-Erickson back when, he says, "it was the best big agency in the industry." The shop handled accounts for Coca-Cola and Miller, among others, but when several of the company’s key creatives struck out on their own, Dundore moved over to Ogilvy & Mather, New York. He would later work for several Gotham shops, including BBDO before heading for Los Angeles. "I made the mistake of thinking that a month at the Beverly Hills Hotel was actually what it was like to live in L.A.," he says. "I’d never seen croissants that big."
Not only did Dundore learn that living in L.A. isn’t like a stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but also that one client can make or break you. On the West Coast, Dundore worked at Cohen Johnson, then in the now defunct L.A. office of Dallas-based TLP, then again at Cohen Johnson. Both agencies experienced troubled waters-Cohen Johnson for client Jack in the Box’s E. coli bacteria scare, and TLP when it lost the Taco Bell account. "I really learned a lesson about advertising in L.A.," Dundore says. "So many agencies have one or two accounts, and it’s an active struggle to get the work."
About five years ago, Dundore took on his current position at asher&partners in part because he saw a challenge in growing the company, which was founded in ’61 under the moniker of Asher/Gould Advertising; the agency was restructured and re-named in ’98. "I wanted to stay in L.A.," he says, "and this was one of the games in town. And I love the idea of a challenge. What’s the point of going to an agency that’s already doing great work?" he asks rhetorically.
Since then, Dundore says, asher&partners has "won some accounts against some big competition," including Legoland, Sun America and the New York, New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Other clients include Suzuki, Equity Toys, the Children’s Bureau of Southern California and the Oregon Health Division. Last year the agency billed $120 million, and over the next five years the goal is to reach the $300 million level. "We’re looking at all accounts," Dundore says. "We’d love to do a food account. I would like to get into the technology business. We’d love to handle the advertising for SHOOT magazine. It doesn’t matter, local, national," he continues. However he does concede that being a mid-sized independent agency does have its pros and cons. "We don’t have branch offices everywhere. Nor do we take orders from branch offices; nor do we have to finance branch offices. We are our own people. That’s the good part. The bad part is that we don’t have branch offices everywhere."
More important to Dundore, however, is his agency’s reputation. "Advertising is no more than boiling a very complicated company or product down to one person, and making sure that person can have a dialogue with another person-that person being the consumer," he says. "It’s not that different than following the process of making friends.
"My plans," he continues, "are to grow this agency into one of the most respected agencies on the West Coast for an ability to spot a solution for a client and tap into it. I don’t want to slather our personality on a project. Not everything can be handled through comedy; not everything can be handled through emotion. I don’t want to have a real witty, intellectual commercial for cake mix. I don’t think people think about cake mix that way. And nothing should be a hard sell anymore. But the advertising answer is somewhere in the product or service, and I’d like to be recognized by my clients as being smart and creative about any type of project."b
