To promote its Bud Select brand, Anheuser Busch wanted to hit a nerve with beer drinkers in their late 20s and early 30s who are experiencing that oh so sweet time in life–they have a real job, disposable income and are not necessarily married, so they can go out and not have to worry about obligations. The company tapped DDB Chicago to create a Web-based animated series called “Crowntown” (www.crowntown.tv) featuring five friends who get into situations this age group can relate to. Instead of using real people, stick figure-like characters were derived from the five main spikes of the Bud Select logo and New York-based animation company PSYOP/Blacklist brought them to life.
“We wanted to figure out a way to make it so that no other beer could do what we were trying to do,” said Don Pogany, group creative director at DDB, adding that they also tried to consider Bud Select within the family of its two brethren–Budweiser and Bud Light.
“We wanted to create a little separation and distinction and make Bud Select a little bit more special. The same drinker might enjoy all three brands but at different times. Our way of looking at Bud Select was going from the notion of ‘hanging out’ to ‘going out.'”
The team had to be careful not to speak down to people or seem aloof. “We tried to develop situations that they might get into that would be a little more upscale like a Saturday night at a club, but still have some humor and realness,” said Pogany.
Take the “Bathroom” episode for example. Who couldn’t relate to the awkwardness that can come from being assisted by a bathroom attendant at a nightclub? Do you tip every time you go in the bathroom, and how much do you tip? In “Elevator,” Boone, one of the characters, gets stuck in an elevator with a beautiful redhead. The situation is less than ideal because he has an upset stomach and needs to use the restroom. He text messages his friends that if he doesn’t get out in 10 minutes, the unthinkable is going to happen. The irony is they are at the grocery store in the toilet paper aisle when they get his text.
Boone’s friends include Tee, Dutch, Jennie and Larry. Each has a distinct personality and background that exemplifies their life in Crowntown. The website also features mini profiles of each character and a map of Crowntown highlighting the spots where they spend most of their time, like the Flop Bar and Mixolydian, the music studio where a few of them work.
Pogany chose PSYOP/Blacklist to bring the characters to life because he liked how they maintained the character of the brushstrokes in the original crown logo. “They really kept it minimalist. You’ll see a key prop here and there, like the awning on the club, or get the sense of them being in the hot tub, but we wanted to be able to do that through negative space wherever we could,” he said.
To give animation director Pistachios a visual reference that might trigger some ideas, Pogany said they actually went to a stage and filmed actors performing the material. New episodes are currently in development. He said the next “season” will delve deeper into the back stories of the characters. The campaign is being promoted on YouTube and in banner ads.
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More