JWT/New York is augmenting its Hairapy TV campaign for Unilever’s Sunsilk with an online execution that lets the hairapists stretch out in long form videos.
“In the :30s you only get an introduction to the characters, but the web gives us a place to expand on that story,” said JWT creative director Brian Carley.
The result is a series of three hairapy sessions in which the actors from the TV spots elaborate on how women can solve their hair problems with Sunsilk products. “It’s tongue in cheek, how people take their hair so seriously,” Carley said. “The hairapists interact with girls on a one to one basis to cure their hair problems.”
The hairapists are dressed in different colored outfits to promote different Sunsilk products and behave differently to promote the products, too. One of them is “always adjusting things,” which relates to people with kinky hair, Carley said.
Grant Janes, director at lookfar films, said the company provided props to help the actors play their roles.
He coordinated the job with the TV shoot. “We had access to images from the TV shoot and we were very cognizant of trying to match the TV spots for brand consistency,” he said.
He shot the videos at Ceco Studios in New York, which provided an interior space that looked like a therapist’s office. The hairapists sat there and spoke to viewers with encouraging words, such as “And remember, each step you take, you’re one step closer to perfect hair.”
He used a Panasonic Varicam DVC-ProHD for the job.
The new videos, which run for about 45 seconds each, play at www.gethairapy.com. They aren’t playing anywhere else yet, but a MySpace version is planned with different videos. It will start in two weeks and include additional rich media banner units, Carley said.
The new videos replace a former Hairapy campaign that included hairapists who were “fun, playful characters who didn’t extend the idea of hairapy,” Carley said. “They were standing on colored disks with a white background and looked like they were out of the Jetsons.” Janes, who shot both versions, said, “The earlier stuff was improvisational, the actors ran loose. This concept is more specific and tighter.”
Carley said the hairapist idea “extends the brand to show we understand in a playful way. We differentiate from other hair brands that show photos of hair on gorgeous models that’s unattainable. We identify with people and say, ‘We’re here to help.'”
The agency plans to expand the campaign with new TV and online video ads.
AI-Assisted Works Can Get Copyright With Enough Human Creativity, According To U.S. Copyright Office
Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.
The nation's copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.
And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office's approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the "centrality of human creativity" in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections.
"Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection," said a statement from Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who directs the office.
An AI-assisted work could be copyrightable if an artist's handiwork is perceptible. A human adapting an AI-generated output with "creative arrangements or modifications" could also make it fall under copyright protections.
The report follows a review that began in 2023 and fielded opinions from thousands of people that ranged from AI developers, to actors and country singers.
It shows the copyright office will continue to reject copyright claims for fully machine-generated content. A person simply prompting a chatbot or AI image generator to produce a work doesn't give that person the ability to copyright that work, according to the report. "Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine ...... Read More