W&K, Joe Pytka Team For Campaign To Relaunch Internet Search Engine.
By KATHY DeSALVO
To an-nounce its newly redesigned web site, Internet search engine AltaVista launched a $100 million TV and print ad campaign—the company’s first such marketing effort.
Created by Portland, Ore.-based Wieden & Kennedy (W&K), and directed by Joe Pytka of Venice, Calif.-based PYTKA, the multi-spot AltaVista package is highlighted by the tagline: "Smart is beautiful." The ads, several of which feature chess master Gary Kasparov and Pamela Anderson Lee (a popular Internet presence in her own right), depict situations in which people can benefit by—or exploit—the information AltaVista can provide.
For instance, a young woman who tries to get out of a speeding ticket is the theme of four spots. In the :60 "Traffic Problems 1," the Porsche-driving woman has been pulled over by a highway patrolman, and barrages him with a monologue questioning the accuracy of the radar gun: Has it been recently calibrated?; Was the test done with tuning forks that were issued with the radar gun?
Her kicker: "Did you know radar guns can cause testicular cancer?" She ends up driving away, unticketed. At spot’s end, a graphic of AltaVista’s search box pops up as the cursor types out the text: "How can I beat a speeding ticket?" accompanied by a recording of Vera Lynn’s "Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye." As in all the spots, the end tag displays the new AltaVista logo and the copy "Smart is beautiful."
A similar scenario is played out in the :60 "Traffic Problems 2," with the same woman but a different cop, to whom she spells out the differences between traffic radar and airport radar; again she escapes a ticket. The search box text, "Do radar guns lie?" is typed as we hear Golden Earring’s "Radar Love."
But in the :45 "Traffic Problems 3," as she starts to protest to yet another officer, he delivers his own spiel. Tuning forks, he tells her, were used, "…and in accordance with Connecticut Supreme Court in the case of State vs. Tomanelli, the radar gun was pointing away from any possible outside influence during the test to be certain readings are from the tuning fork and not something else that might give a stronger vibration." The angry woman calls after him, "Hey, did you know that radar guns—" the cop cuts her off with "—can cause testicular cancer." The search box entry is "State vs. Tomanelli," "I Fought the Law and the Law Won," as sung by Bobby Fuller, kicks in.
In a :15 follow-up spot, the woman has really gotten her comeuppance: the wrecked Porsche (the car was chosen as an homage to James Dean, noted Pytka) is shown by the side of a highway near an ambulance. One firefighter on the scene asks his colleague, "Did you know radar guns can cause testicular cancer?," as we hear the Connie Francis standard, "I’m Sorry."
Director/cameraman Pytka shot these four spots for W&K’s business pitch to Alta Vista after he got a call from longtime friend Jim Riswold, who was the agency executive creative director at the time. Riswold related they had only two weeks to assemble a presentation; W&K hadn’t been in on the pitch sooner because, up until then, it had the Microsoft account. "[Microsoft] conveniently made it easy for us [to pursue AltaVista] by firing us," said Riswold.
Pytka was the agency’s unanimous choice to direct the spots. Riswold commented, "It seems like there’s so much Internet advertising out there that’s oddness for oddness’ sake. There was such fertile ground here to be very smart about the whole thing, [which was] perfect fodder for Mr. Pytka."
Riswold and creative directors Rob Palmer and Bob Moore came up with the genesis of what would become the "Traffic Problems" series of spots. Palmer related that in thinking about the concept of how cool it is to be smart, they were inspired by a scene in Good Will Hunting in which Matt Damon displays his impressive knowledge to put a Harvard snob in his place.
"Everybody wishes they had that knowledge at their fingertips," said Palmer. "Quite literally, that’s what the Internet is, and AltaVista gives you that path to the knowledge." The creative team did, in fact, use AltaVista to come up with all the information used in the spots. Palmer and Riswold related, however, that when an account executive present on the shoot was pulled over for speeding, the AE tried to use the same litany of information in "Traffic Problems" to get out of a ticket—unsuccessfully.
"The commercials we shot on this one day probably wouldn’t have been done if you had to put them through the client," said Pytka, who filmed on location in the Palmdale Desert in Palmdale, Calif. "We know we had to do a spot for the pitch; the original commercial was the girl getting a ticket. Then they wrote a bunch of them and made a little campaign out of it."
Checkmate
After W&K won the account, it produced other ads, including :60 and :30 versions of "Chess," which was also part of their client presentation (in storyboard form). In the spots, Kasparov plays multiple games as part of a chess master tournament. He instantly moves the game pieces and goes from one table to another, until he reaches a young boy’s chessboard. To everyone’s shock, Kasparov is stumped, and as the boy smiles, the cursor types out: "How can I beat Kasparov’s Evans Gambit?"
In another :30 ad, "Urinal," a guy uses a cell phone while relieving himself, only to drop the phone into the urinal. The search box text: "Hands-free cell phones." In the :30 "Nursing Home," a feisty senior starts to leave a nursing home and tells an administrator, "My nurse’s assistant sees eight more residents than the state regulators allow; you don’t serve us enough protein and your facility ranking just dropped to fourteen. Sounds like a problem to me."
The last spot produced, the :30 "Malibu," has Anderson Lee breathlessly thanking someone who saved her after she was stranded by a mudslide. "…And then I saw you crashing through those barricades," says Lee, "in that big, huge, giant—what do you call those things?" Cut to her savior, a giddy teen boy, who replies, "Monster truck?" Lee gushes, "I can’t believe you were there; what were the odds?" The search box text reveals: "Celebs stranded by Malibu mudslide."
Riswold observed that in the wake of his enjoyment of this production, he asked the agency if he could relinquish his executive creative director position to instead serve as creative director on the AltaVista account. "I haven’t had that much fun on a shoot in a while," said Riswold.
The creative players at W&K were Moore (the CD on "Traffic Problems," "Malibu," "Urgent Call" and copywriter on "Nursing Home" and "Chess"); Palmer (CD on "Traffic Problems," "Malibu" and "Urgent Call," and art director on "Nursing Home" and "Chess") and Riswold (CD on "Nursing Home" and "Chess," and copywriter on "Traffic Problems"). Additional credits go to art director Bill Karow ("Malibu"); copywriter Derek Barnes ("Malibu"); art director Tim Hanrahan ("Urgent Call"); copywriter Evelyn Monroe Neill ("Urgent Call") and Henry Lu, who produced all the spots.
Additional production credits go to executive producer Tara Fitzpatrick; producer Cathryn Rhodes and production designer Geoffrey Kirkland. The spots were edited by Paul Norling at FilmCore, Santa Monica. Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3, Santa Monica, did the transfer. Nigel Randall at Riot, Santa Monica, was online editor. Donna Pittman and Mark Hensley at L.A.-based Pittman Hensley did title design.
Sound design was supplied by Kim V. Christensen, Noises Digital Landscape, Berkeley, Calif. Audio was mixed by Jimmy Hite, Margarita Mix, Hollywood.
Review: Writer-Director Adam Elliot’s “Memoir of a Snail”
It's not your typical stop-motion film when characters name pets after Sylvia Plath and read "The Diary of Anne Frank" — or when the story's inspired by a quote from existentialist thinker Søren Kierkegaard. And it's certainly not your typical stop-motion film when you find yourself crying as much as the characters do — in their case, with huge droplets leaking from bulging, egg-shaped eyes so authentic-looking, you expect the screen to get wet. But those are just a few of the unique things about Adam Elliot's "Memoir of a Snail," a film that's as heart-tugging as it is technically impressive, a work of both emotional resonance and great physical detail using only clay, wire, paper and paint. One thing Elliot's film is not, though, is for kids. So please take note before heading to the multiplex with family in tow: this film earns its R rating, as you'll discover as soon as young Grace, voiced by Sarah Snook, tells us she thought masturbation was about chewing your food properly. Sex, nudity, drunk driving, a fat fetish — like we said, it's R-rated for a reason. But let's start at the beginning. In this, his seventh "clayography" (for "clay" and "biography"), the Australian writer-director explores the process of collecting unnecessary objects. Otherwise known as hoarding, it's something that weighs us down in ways we can't see, for all the clutter. Elliot also argues that it helps us build constrictive shells around ourselves — like snail shells, perhaps. Our protagonist is Grace Pudel, voiced with a quirky warmth and plenty of empathy by the wonderfully agile Snook. We first encounter Grace as a grown woman, telling her long, lonely life story to her pet garden snail, Sylvia (named after Plath), at a moment of deep sadness. Then we flash... Read More