Five years ago when he was a creative at The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va., Alon Shoval reached a personal, life-threatening crossroads. Helping him get through the crisis–which entailed the removal of one of his lungs–was thinking about what he would look forward to if he survived: becoming a parent. He did indeed survive, met his wife-to-be and now has two kids.
The notion of expressing what you would want to accomplish or experience–from a simple everyday pleasure to the lifetime commitment of parenthood–when facing your mortality stuck with Shoval, providing the creative inspiration for a campaign he recently conceived of for Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic.
Shoval served not only as executive creative director and writer on the work for Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos, New York, but also as director of four TV spots. The package marked his full fledged directorial debut, produced by The Mothership, a new bicoastal shop which specializes in facilitating helming endeavors for ad agency creatives.
Shoval talked with Cleveland Clinic patients who shared their aspirations with him. Based on their stories, Shoval wrote letters that expressed what several patients hoped to experience once they were healthy again. He penned these letters from a patient perspective. One such letter told the story of a man who wanted to return to performing music–it became the script for the Cleveland Clinic commercial titled “Piano.”
The spot opens with a camera slowly moving around a piano, almost romancing it as a male voiceover relates, “Forgive me. A decade has passed in silence for I couldn’t chain your melody with my Parkinson’s.
“But soon,” continues the voiceover confidently, “my brain will send tiny electronic notes to my fingers and bend them to my will as before. Let the neighbors bang on the walls. I will play fortissimo all night long.”
The camera moves to reveal the keyboard, and a pair of hands enters the picture and begins to play.
A female voice then intervenes, “Find the confidence to face any condition….”
She then completes the sentence with “–at Cleveland Clinic.”
An end tag carries the Cleveland Clinic logo, accompanied by the slogan, “A world leader in deep brain stimulation,” and a Web site address (ClevelandClinic.org/LettersToTomorrow).
Several letters crafted by Shoval appear on the Web site. But now these writings are eliciting letters from others who are ill yet positively looking ahead to their lives after recovery from whatever malady has stricken them. This entire campaign–including the TV spots and the Web portion–isn’t so much about the Cleveland Clinic, which Shoval describes as a wonderful nurturing place for patients, but rather about providing hope and inspiration for people facing health crises.
“Patients are helping patients and the Web site is a meeting place for people to gain positive inspiration and to cope with their situations. That’s what makes this so gratifying creatively. The campaign is helping people. Thinking about what you would do once you are healthy again is a powerful force that helps people pull through a crisis.”
Indeed the Web component–the centerpiece of which is a book of letters–is proving to have a profound and positive impact on patients’ lives and their outlook for the future. Driving traffic to that site are print, radio and TV ads. The latter were the spots “Marathon,” “Fetch,” “Playground” and the aforementioned “Piano,” all of which are cut from the same motivational cloth.
In “Marathon,” for example, we see a pair of sneakers slowly descend before our eyes. A voiceover relates, “I’ve done it every year with my own lungs. This year I’m going to do it with someone else’s. The operation is tomorrow. And my first day of training will be after that. Even if it’s just one step out of bed. And the next day one more step down the hall. I’m going to make it to the finish line. See you in November New York Marathon.”
The Hill Holliday team consisted of Shoval, art director Simon Grendene and producer Kelly Walsh.
Tara Fitzpatrick and Tom Mooney executive produced for The Mothership, a venture of Venice-based PYTKA. Gary Romano served as producer on the job. Shoval said that The Mothership was very supportive of his directorial endeavor. The DP was Simon Coull.
Lucas Spaulding of Bug Editorial, New York, cut the commercials. Tom Poole of The Mill, New York, was the colorist. Audio engineers were Carl Mandelbaum and Hillary Kew of audioEngine, New York.
Shoval hopes to build upon the integrated campaign. One possibility is a documentary following several patients through their ordeal to hopefully a tomorrow when they can experience the aspirations expressed in their letters.
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Movie
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. "Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?" For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media. The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year. In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz. Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his mind. Remarks have... Read More