What do most people do when they’re sitting in a bar having a beer with friends? They regale each other with funny stories. And it’s that simple truth that inspired a humorous new spot campaign for Miller Lite, created by Ogilvy & Mather, New York. Each commercial finds a person sharing a crazy tale with friends over a few brews. In one spot, a guy recounts how he had to stay submerged in a pool after accidentally ingesting Viagra. Another ad finds a guy telling his buddies how he dumped his girlfriend, only to discover that she had just hit the lottery for millions. All of the spots are clever and funny. But the standout is the :60 version of "Weary Traveler."
Set on a deserted stretch of Texas road, the commercial opens on a guy standing next to his car, which has a flat tire. A tractor-trailer truck approaches, and the stranded man flags it down. Cut to him sitting in the passenger seat of the cab. "Thanks for the lift," he says to the driver, a heavyset man in a flannel shirt and tan baseball cap.
Silent, the driver nods pleasantly, then reaches back into the cab, pulling out a dummy. Yes, a ventriloquist’s dummy. The wooden, wide-eyed puppet is attired like the driver, even wearing the same baseball cap.
The passenger looks at the dummy, then at the driver in disbelief. The driver continues to nod and smile back. No words are spoken as the hitchhiker squirms uncomfortably in his seat under the dummy’s intense stare.
The passenger looks at the driver again. The driver just nods as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Suddenly, the dummy lets out an eardrum-piercing scream.
Cut to the passenger leaping out of the moving truck. The shot freezes on him in midair.
Next, we see this guy in a bar, recounting the bizarre experience for his friends while they drink beer. "You jumped out?" a girl exclaims.
"I jumped out of a moving truck!" the guy swears.
A voiceover interrupts the scene, declaring, "Life is best told over a great-tasting Miller Lite at a place called Miller Time." As this statement is made, the spot cuts to a letter-boxed shot of a golden, bubbly Miller Lite. A caption over the shot reads, "It’s Miller Time."
Cut to a long shot of the truck speeding down the highway, as we hear the dummy’s rapid questioning: "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"
Erich Joiner of bicoastal Tool directed "Weary Traveler" and the other ads in this six-spot campaign. While "Weary Traveler" called for a director with a sense of comedic timing, it was also technically demanding.
For starters, much of the spot takes place inside the cab of a moving truck. "That was quite an ordeal," Joiner recalled, explaining that the truck in which the scene took place was actually resting atop a huge flatbed trailer being pulled by another truck. During the two-day shoot in Lancaster, Calif., this mega-rig—loaded with camera gear, generators and other equipment—drove up and down a two-mile stretch of road.
Joiner and DP Bob Richardson shot this portion of the ad—which the director calls the recollection phase—on Super 35mm, and it was letterboxed to give the footage a cinematic feel. Wailing harmonica music in the background—composed by Craig Snyder of Snyder Music, New York—intensifies the scene’s sweeping loneliness.
The bar scene was shot on 16mm for a grainy, documentary-style look. While the opening of the spot is slickly produced, Joiner went for a more natural feel in the bar, most of which was ad-libbed. "I just said to the lead actor, ‘You know the story. Now, I just want you to tell the story and act like that story really happened two weeks ago,’ " Joiner recounted. "The performance was great, because you got that naturalness. When someone else had a question about his story, they just popped in. It was more natural, like you and I are speaking."
Naturally, the client was eager for a bottle or glass of Miller Lite to be seen in the spot. But showcasing the product in the bar scene was difficult. "We wanted the product to look good, not grainy," noted Joiner. So rather than try to force an unnatural shot, the creative team at O&M combed through its video library and found stock footage of a glass of bubbly Miller Lite to insert into the ad.
O&M senior partner/creative director/art director Joe Johnson said that given Joiner’s ability to shoot a diverse array of visual styles, and his knack for comedy, he was the perfect helmer for this spot—and for the whole campaign. "He understands comedy and has great timing," observed Johnson. "He knows how to draw it out slowly and not make it too broad. A lot of comedy directors are broad."
As for the concept of the "Weary Traveler" spot in particular, Joiner, a former ad agency creative himself, says he was "drawn to the weirdness. It’s out there for beer advertising."
The creative team at O&M was certainly aiming to do something different—something that would appeal to all beer drinkers, not just men. Regarding "Weary Traveler," Johnson explained, "We started with the idea of a trucker picking a hitchhiker up, and then we just wanted something bizarre to happen. We wanted to make it something that was creepy—but not so creepy that you’re freaked out by the spot."
A ventriloquist recorded dozens and dozens of lines for the dummy to utter. According to Johnson, they included, "Hey, are you an organ donor?" "Do you like tight boxes?" "Have you ever been in a freezer?"
"One was creepier than the next," recalled Johnson, laughing.
Once the creative team got into the editing room with editor Dave Bradley of Go Robot!, New York, and got a look at the footage that Joiner had shot, they decided it wasn’t necessary for the dummy to shock the passenger with a barrage of scary lines. "We realized in the edit room that the humor was coming from the weird tension between these two guys—the hitchhiker and the driver," Bradley reported. "You could have the dummy say a bunch of different weird lines, but it seemed to dilute the situation."
So Bradley cut together a segment in which the two men and the dummy communicate via looks only. "We ended up doing a 180, but we had the footage there to do it because Erich had shot so much great stuff," said Bradley.
Everyone still thought the dummy should utter at least one line before the passenger jumped out of the cab. But then O&M copywriter Jeff Mullen suggested another idea: Why not just have the dummy scream? They tried it, with Mullen doing the scream, and "We liked it so much we stuck with it," stated Johnson. "It makes the spot."
The dummy’s scream was without a doubt an unexpected twist. But it sure was effective. As Bradley points out, "Wouldn’t that scream make you jump out of a truck?"
