By Robert Goldrich

Director Jim Jenkins of O Positive Films made his first mark in the ad arena as an agency creative, with a long tenure at Ogilvy & Mather, New York, and then scoring with savvy work out of his own nicebigbrain boutique.
    While the latter shop still exists for a select project or two, for the most part it has outlived its usefulness as Jenkins said its primary purpose was to generate good creative for him as a director–at least until his directorial reputation could merit his working with some of the best creatives in the business.
    That certainly has happened over the years, with recent humorous examples including his Sprint Nextel spot “Wedding” out of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, which earned a 2009 primetime commercial Emmy nomination; Ebay’s “Civil War” for BBDO New York in which the authenticity of a battle reenactment is disrupted by the sight of a soldier in British redcoat uniform from the Revolutionary War–not to mention another warrior motoring about on a Segway; an outlandish viral piece for the TBS sitcom My Boys for Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, in which a Soviet TV series creator offers proof that his ideas have been ripped off by the powers that be at TBS; and a Progresso Soup campaign from Saatchi featuring people calling into Progresso’s kitchen headquarters, connecting via a phone hotline made of soup cans and string.
    That latter work is inspired and inventive, not exactly a description normally associated with packaged goods fare. Consider the spot “Mixed Signals, which opens on a Progresso chef in the kitchen. We then hear a woman from afar say, “ring, ring.” He grabs a Progresso can hanging from the ceiling and answers it, beginning a conversation with the woman.
    “This guy in the office just asked me to marry him,” she says as we see her in her workspace cubicle.
    “Congratulations,” replies the chef.
    She then clarifies that she wasn’t actually proposed to but the male co-worker gave her a bowl of Progresso’s Italian Wedding soup. We see the bowl of delicious looking soup on her desk.
    The chef points out that the soup is his reduced sodium recipe.
    She interprets that to mean that her would-be groom “wants me to live in his arms forever.”
    The woman then holds her “phone” can to her heart, enabling the chef to hear it beating.
    “Sounds like a girl in love,” he says.
    The woman, continuing her trip to fantasy land, then asks, “Want to hear my baby names?”
    The chef responds in the affirmative, noting that he has “a few minutes.”
    As she starts to rattle off names, he leaves the “phone” hanging, going off to prepare some more soup.
    A voiceover relates, “Progresso. You gotta taste the soup.”
    “The Progresso campaign is a testament to [Saatchi executive creative director] Gerry Graf,” observed Jenkins. “I had never done a packaged goods job before–but the idea was just too good not to do. Remarkably there’s never a scene without the product. Gerry managed to craft a spot all about the product yet it’s totally entertaining.”
    Jenkins added, “There are times you can often judge the work by how much is in the presentation. I’ll get an entire Powerpoint presentation for one script that isn’t particularly good. By contrast, Gerry will send me one sentence and the idea is simple and great.”
    Graf was also behind the My Boys viral promo, adding to Jenkins’ track record of working with the agency creative–which also encompasses such notable work as Embassy Suites’ “Answers”  and Nextel’s “Dance Party” back when Graf was at TBWAChiatDay, New York, and Jenkins was directing at Hungry Man. “Dance Party” was one of the spots that helped earn Jenkins a DGA Commercial Director of the Year nomination in 2005.
    “It all comes back to the quality of the idea,” said Jenkins. “As a director I’m only interested in the idea.
    “I wasn’t drawn, for example, to the TBS job because it was a viral,” continued the director. “There’s nothing magical about something being viral. I see a lot of viral work that honestly feels like it could be told in a lot less time but instead it’s stretched out because it can be. It kind of makes me shy away from virals because often there’s no concept to justify the longer time frame. But Gerry’s idea for TBS justified the extra time to tell the story.”
    Similarly Jenkins credits talented creatives such as Greg Hahn and Mike Smith at BBDO for the Ebay spot, part of a Silver Lion-winning campaign this year at Cannes.
    “These are creatives who just get it, who create great ideas,” said Jenkins, who confessed, “I feel I’m much better at directing than I was as a creative director. I don’t think I was ever as good as the best creatives I’ve been fortunate enough to work with as a director.”
    The best creatives, pointed out Jenkins, are also willing to explore every way possible to make their ideas better, paving the way for impromptu moments and experimentation on set or location.
    For instance, the Segway was on the Ebay shoot as production gear. The notion came up of putting it into the actual spot to add to the humor, and the creatives embraced it.
    Cut from the same cloth was the Sprint Nextel shoot for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The comedy commercial depicted the perfectly planned wedding, with a film crew at the matrimonial reins to make sure that everything would go smoothly no matter what the problem.
    “The idea of a film crew that makes magic happen and is buttoned down on all the details was nothing new to our crew and group of artists,” said Paul Stechschulte, group creative director at Goodby. “Thus everyone felt they had a connection to the story and could bring different ideas to consider. The core of the idea was already there when we started shooting but there were so many nice touches added during the course of the shoot based on contributions from others on the job. There were certain zingers, one liners, the idea of having a cue card guy holding up an ‘I Do’ sign for the bride.
    “What sticks in my mind,” continued Stechschulte, “was the handling of the stunt double groom–the replacement groom who in the script had to be used since the original groom had cold feet. On the day we were doing a run-through of the action, the idea came up of picking up the replacement groom as if he were a prop. We were almost treating him like a mannequin and that added a lot to the humor in the final spot.”
    Goodby art director Jack Woodworth said of Jenkins, “He immediately understood the overarching story, but maybe more importantly the subtle intricacies to get the most out of the script/cast. Even on the shoot day, he kept trying to push the script and cast to make the spot tighter and smart with stuff both scripted and unscripted.”

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