Sometimes you get that overwhelming need to tell the world just how wonderful your new love object is.
That’s the premise of the new :30 Volkswagen spot "Spread the Joy," directed by Tom Kuntz and Michael Maguire of bicoastal/ international Propaganda Films via Arnold Communications, Boston. Except here the love object isn’t a person, but a newly acquired Jetta automobile.
The spot opens on a young man sitting in his shiny new Jetta, parked in the driveway outside his moderately lush suburban home. Intently studying the manual, he breathes a "whoa" of excitement at his discovery, then rushes into the house, yelling, "Honey! Sweetie!" He races through the kitchen and the den, past the wedding photos on the wall, to find his wife. She is sitting, wrapped neatly in a dressing gown and with a towel wound neatly around her wet hair, carefully applying a coat of red nail polish to a toe. "Come with me!" he shouts, pulling her to her feet and racing to the driveway in a mad whir. "Watch this," he commands, as he turns the key in the lock and all four car windows smoothly slide open. Elated, he turns around to witness her joy, only to see the house door slam behind her. The final shot displays the words, "Jetta. Spread the Joy," followed by the Volvo tagline, "Drivers Wanted."
"Spread the Joy" is part of a two-spot campaign that additionally consists of "Cooper," also helmed by Kuntz and Maguire. "Cooper" documents a young guy going around to his buddy’s house at 7:04 a.m. to show off his new car.
According to Alan Pafenbach, executive VP/group creative director, Arnold Communications, the campaign follows the Volkswagen tradition of capturing those moments of human truth that everyone can relate to.
"We guys tend to kind of get caught up in the moment when we discover some new cool gadgetry, but often our significant others are not quite as excited about things like that, so the ad shows the great interplay between men and women that I think most people can immediately recognize," he explained.
"We were also trying to tap into that universal experience that everybody who has ever bought something new and cool has—where nobody could possibly be as excited as you. Most people will tolerate it, but after a while it’s, ‘Enough already!’ He has probably hauled her out into the driveway six times already that day and she’s like, "I’m painting my nails, I’m half naked and you’ve got me out on the stoop of our house where all the neighbors can see, just so I can see that the windows open by remote."
Keith Dezen, agency producer on the job, said that finding the right director involved a long, arduous search before deciding on the young duo, Kuntz and Maguire.
"These two young guys have a fairly new reel, but they seem to have a pretty good finger on the young, hip stuff. We had a couple of conference calls with them and they were pretty crazy during the calls, and then they put together this 20-page treatment," Dezen recalled. "It was stuff that you would never do in the commercial, but their outrageousness in the treatment made it so funny, and we felt we could pull someone back rather than pushing them forward," he added.
Kuntz said that as soon as he and Maguire were approached, they were intent on getting the job. "We were kind of like the wild cards at first. When Volkswagen comes knocking on your door, this is the kind of commercial you want on your reel."
Filming took place in Memphis, a location chosen because the agency wanted to add a slightly different texture to the spot, steering away from the Los Angeles and New York scenes that appear in so many ads.
The ongoing strike ensured slim pickings in terms of finding talent, so the directing duo considered what seemed like every single person they’d ever met. Then, during the pre-production meeting in Memphis, the client rejected their choice of talent for the lead guy. So they were driving around the city, desperately trying to figure out what to do, when Maguire was struck with sudden inspiration. "I was like, ‘Hey, Tom, what about our friend Johnny T?’ and as soon as I said it, Tom was like, ‘Perfect.’ Johnny T is John Tumelty who, ironically enough, is a senior art director at New York agency Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer/Euro RSCG, where he works on the Volvo account. He was vacationing at the time, on the Jersey Shore. But the directors managed to track him down and sent him the script. The previously untested actor convinced his sister to stand in as his "wife" and filmed the commercial himself, scene by scene on his own video camera. When he sent the tape to Memphis, the client immediately gave him the go-ahead, and he got on the next plane.
According to Maguire, at first Tumelty was the worst actor in the world, but once he got over being nervous he was "such a ham, we couldn’t stop him." The wife was also new to acting but delivered a smooth performance pretty much straightaway.
Filming in Memphis also made finding locations more challenging. "Volkswagen has a whole aesthetic already established, which is a very clean and modern look, so we didn’t want to leap away from that. It’s a fine line—not super upscale and not super downscale—so to achieve that with the house, we needed to look at house after house. And in Memphis, when you don’t have house after house, it can get a little difficult," observed Maguire.
Joe O’Connell of New York-based Blast Digital Audio, was the mixer on the ad. He noted that what’s great about the Volkswagen spots in general, is that they are clever and humorous without hitting you over the head. When adding the sound, he said, they took almost all of the sounds from the location recordings and then did some subtle layering in places to enhance the mix. "With an idea like this one, I find the sound is more about what you don’t add than what you add," he said.
Pafenbach reported that the agency couldn’t be happier with the way the campaign turned out. "The directors have a great sense of humor, and they do good things with the camera," he said. "The locations they chose and the way they art-directed the house give it a neat feel, but not in a ‘hey, look at me’ kind of way. Everyone worked efficiently, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome."
