Sprint’s new website to promote Nextel Direct Connect, www.getworkdonenow.com, launched April 7, features two animated video ads from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners that show how cell phones equipped with Nextel Direct Connect can solve personal or work related problems with the touch of a button, or push to talk, as the technology is called. The videos were produced by Superfad, Los Angeles.
“Iredell,” which runs just over 90 seconds, tells the story of a man who is injured during a walk in the forest and is rescued quickly after he calls for help. The film is based on actual data from Iredell County, NC where Emergency Communications Operations and Management handled 335,400 calls last year. “We took real stories and picked the most interesting case studies of things the technology makes possible,” said Christian Haas, creative director at GSP. “We wanted to tell the story in an informative, down to earth way.”
Yet the agency also wanted the story to be entertaining, so “Iredell” used a large bear as a potential threat to the man who fell in the forest. An image of the bear is shown, first with informative statistics about its size and weight (7 ft., 500 lbs.) and later holding a knife and fork after the man is rescued “and taken off the menu.”
There’s also a cute white dog who accompanies the man on his walk, whose trip to the ranger station to report the accident is charted with a jagged yellow line (at a top speed of 19 mph it would take the dog 27 minutes to get there, “and then, he’d need to learn English”).
Franklin Tipton, GSP’s other creative director on the job, said, “We wanted to design the video with information so we included the data points.”
The entertaining element of the video was heightened by the use of a common voiced narrator, who speaks in a bright, friendly tone. “We used a real person telling the story, not typical voice over talent,” Tipton said.
As for the use of animation, Haas said, “There’s nothing more boring than watching a case study PowerPoint presentation on a web site, so we wrote the script with a sense of humor and used animation, which was the best way to tell the story.”
Kevin Lau, the Superfad director, said, “The agency came to us with the infographic style narrative, but they wanted to convey a human element and make it friendly. We looked into creative ways of interpreting the infographic illustrations and how we could bring them into 3D, which was a challenge because infographics aren’t usually built in 3D.”
Lau integrated the human element with the infographics by creating characters without specific facial features, who are “iconic,” he said. “We wanted to create them friendly enough so viewers could relate to them as a person, but not identifiable as specific characters. They had the infographic anonymous vernacular, but with a personable feel with rounded shapes and playful bodies.”
The animation was created in Maya to create the main images, with After Effects used for layering the infographics, Lau said. Rough sketches were used to create the characters.
The video is one of two playing at the Nextel site now. The other is “Katrina,” which explains the way emergency service workers used Nextel Direct Connect to assist with the recovery and restore service after the hurricane hit. It’s a much more serious video than “Iredell,” but told in the same casual way.
The videos are the first two in a series of four videos produced so far that present consumer as well as professional use of Nextel Direct Connect. “Everyone knows that blue collar workers use it, but the idea is to educate people about the capabilities of the technology because soccer moms will use it, too,” Tipton said. “Sprint estimates that push to talk technology will get more popular with groups of people, like Yahoo! and be more social. Families will use it.”
He said the other two videos will be posted within two weeks and additional videos will be produced later.
The videos play in a campaign that also includes three thirty second TV spots that are live action, but similar to the animated videos with the get more work done theme. The TV ads contrast blue collar workers who use Nextel Direct Connect efficiently with “famously inefficient institutions like Congress, airlines and the DMV,” Tipton said. Outdoor advertising is also planned.
The TV spots are :30s, but the videos are 90+ seconds. “We’re taking full advantage of the full screen we have on the site to play the long form videos,” Haas said. “With the web flexibility we could push the scenes longer, since it wasn’t a traditional media buy,” Lau said. “It was challenging not to let them get too long, but we didn’t have to fit them into a traditional time frame.”
The videos are playing at the Nextel site and no other sites now, Tipton said. Banners and pre-roll ads playing at financial and news sites, including CNN Money, Entrepreneur, MSN, and CNN drive consumers to the site.
“Iredell,” and especially “Katrina,” “seem like stories without a silver lining,” he said. “But Sprint was there. They’re always on the ground and don’t take credit for it immediately, but they’ve helped a lot of people and this is a good way to tell the story.”
Michelle Satter To Be Honored At Sundance Film Festival Gala
The nonprofit Sundance Institute today announced details for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s gala fundraiser, Celebrating Sundance Institute, which will take place on Friday, January 24, 2025 at the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley in Utah. The event will be an evening in celebration of Michelle Satter, founding sr. director of artist programs at Sundance Institute, for her longstanding commitment to nurturing artists and cultivating independent film through the Sundance Labs, where visionary artists convene to develop groundbreaking projects through an in-depth creative process, for the past four decades. The annual Vanguard Awards will be presented during the evening to Sean Wang, writer and director of Dìdi, and Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, co-directors of Sugarcane, who premiered their films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
The annual gala enables the nonprofit to raise funds to support independent artists year-round through labs, grants, and public programming that nurture artists from all over the world. The 2025 event is made possible with the generous support of Google TV. The Festival will take place from January 23–February 2, 2025, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, with a selection of titles available online from January 30–February 2, 2025 for audiences across the country to discover bold independent storytelling.
“For over four decades Michelle has been devoted to truly championing independent storytellers,” said Amanda Kelso, acting CEO of Sundance Institute. “She has encouraged artists to own their voice, learn their craft, become fierce leaders, and develop their resilience in our changing ecosystem. Her life-long commitment to supporting artists, especially in underrepresented... Read More