Stodgy CEOs who hit the links in Palm Beach probably won’t get FootJoy’s new animated ad "Call to Arms," which portrays an array of golf stars as Golf Gods with super powers. But hip 20- and 30-something golfers who grew up watching the 1970s cartoon Super Friends—which chronicled the adventures of Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the members of the Justice League of America—undoubtedly will. Created by Arnold Worldwide, Boston, and animated by J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, White Plains, New York, the :60 (of which there is also a :30 version) is purposely cheesy, mimicking the simplistic—okay, let’s be honest and say downright bad—animation style and overly dramatic narration popularized by Super Friends (which ran in various incarnations on ABC from ’73 to ’85) and parodied during Saturday Night Live’s "TV Funhouse" segments.
"Call to Arms" opens with a booming voiceover—accompanied by a title card—that declares: "FootJoy presents: The Golf Gods."
Cut to a shot of a golf-course groundskeeper using a hole digger. According to the announcer, the groundskeeper digs a little too deep, exposing the earth’s core. In the process, a shipment of FootJoy shoes and gloves—contained in a nearby delivery truck—receives "an excess dose of magma radiation."
In turn, all of the golfers who use equipment coming from that truck are transformed into "superhero-like figures unlike any the golf world has known before." A series of segments introduces viewers to these newly minted Golf Gods, including Lefty (a.k.a. Phil Mickelson), who possesses a mystical flying visor; the Irish Dynamo (that’s Darren Clarke), a man able to endure any weather conditions; and The Swede (Jesper Parnevix), who is equipped with laser vision.
Upon realizing the full extent of their powers, these golfers form a secret alliance, according to the announcer. Operating out of a remote mountainside country club, they band together to rid golf of evil.
Three subsequent spots will find the Golf Gods matching wits with an arsenal of villains, including Gale Monster, a giant storm cloud responsible for canceled rounds; and Mr. Dimples. Maimed while touring a golf ball finishing facility (Mr. Dimples’ head is a giant golf ball), this villain is determined to ruin the game for everyone.
Clever and cool, the campaign is unique in the world of golf advertising. "We were definitely trying to cut through the clutter, the usual golf commercials," according to Arnold Worldwide VP/associate creative director/art director Ron Harper, who confirmed that the spots are squarely aimed at the younger golfer.
For the last three years, FootJoy had been reaching younger golfers via a successful spot campaign that featured a wacky character known as Sign Boy. Also created by Arnold Worldwide, the ads found Sign Boy performing crazy golf-related stunts. So it wasn’t necessarily that much of a stretch for the client to grasp Arnold Worldwide’s latest concept. "FootJoy has had a great campaign they’ve been running for three years, so that kind of raised the bar for them creatively," Arnold Worldwide senior copywriter Grady Winch explained. "People are expecting good, fun, interesting things out of them."
Hence the Golf Gods theme. "These guys [FootJoy’s endorsers] are some of the superstars of the PGA tour, and it really lent itself to the Golf Gods idea," said Winch. "They are gods on tour."
To bring this idea to life, Arnold Worldwide turned to J.J. Sedelmaier Productions, which animated Saturday Night Live’s "TV Funhouse" segments from ’96 to ’99. FYI: A recent article in The New York Times erroneously stated that J.J. Sedelmaier Productions continues to handle that task. While the company is open to working on the project again, these days it does not animate those segments. According to company president/director J.J. Sedelmaier, who was eager to clarify the issue, "We pulled back because we wanted to continue doing other stuff and didn’t want to be pigeonholed. We’re not severed from it one hundred percent. It’s just that I don’t want to dedicate the studio to Saturday Night Live."
Back to FootJoy’s "Call to Arms," and the ensuing campaign: Arnold Worldwide brought Sedelmaier into the project early on. When they contacted him, the creative team "certainly had scripts and a nice, buttoned-up presentation to give to FootJoy," Sedelmaier related. "But they prefaced everything with the client and themselves with, ‘Once we bring J.J. in, we want to make sure we’re flexible enough to be able to move things around, because he is going to add—or he’d better ad—something.’ "
Sedelmaier appreciated Arnold Worldwide’s willingness, as well as the client’s, to make adjustments when necessary. "They came to me saying, ‘We want you to make this what you feel it needs to be. Let’s work together on it,’ " Sedelmaier recalled. "They didn’t try to steer it into a direction [from which] it wouldn’t go comfortably. I’ve had it happen before where people think they understand a realm of animation and a realm of cartooning—even a realm of design. And once we start talking, I’m realizing they want it to be something it really can’t be. That’s a terrible situation to find yourself in. But I wasn’t for a second in that situation with these guys."
While Sedelmaier provided the Arnold Worldwide creative team with an education in animation, they tutored him on the world of golf. The sport—as well as the players—was essentially a mystery to Sedelmaier, who doesn’t really follow professional sports of any kind. To help familiarize him with the game and the golfers, Arnold Worldwide flew him down to Florida to meet several of the players, gave him photos and sample equipment, and explained the nuances of the game.
The input of Harper and Winch in particular (both men are avid golfers) proved invaluable. "We got to the pencil test stage, and they noticed that when the golfers swung the clubs, we had left a little bit of the club sticking out of the end of their hands. You really hold the club at the very end, so it shouldn’t have shown," said Sedelmaier, acknowledging he wouldn’t have known that himself. The mistake was quickly corrected.
Harper and Winch were also able to fill in Sedelmaier on certain quirks and habits of the players being illustrated. For example, as you’ll see in "Call to Arms," Parnevix wears his cap flipped up as he does in everyday play.
Attention to detail was actually quite important when it came to animating "Call to Arms." "Usually, you want to mess it up a little bit to make it look crummy," Sedelmaier noted. "But it’s not going to work very well for FootJoy if you don’t recognize the characters relatively consistently. We had to be a little bit careful when it came to the products, too."
All of the drawings were done at J.J. Sedelmaier’s White Plains studios. Sedelmaier and his team of in-house animators (as well as a few freelancers) were busy working on the project (that includes all of the ads in the campaign) from September through much of this month. Meanwhile, the inking and painting was done at VirtualMagic USA, Los Angeles.
Sedelmaier also worked on three print ads for FootJoy. You can see his handiwork on the FootJoy website (www.footjoy. com). Click on the FJ Golf Gods link on the left-hand side of the page, to be taken to an area of the site that profiles each of the Golf Gods featured in the campaign. The "Call to Arms" commercial can be viewed, as well. (The rest of the spots will be available online eventually.)
Already, "Call to Arms" has garnered attention. The New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott recently penned a column devoted to the commercial—and he even quoted Sedelmaier, which is something of a rarity given that Elliott generally only quotes advertising agency executives.
Meanwhile, there has been mention of Golf Gods trading cards, according to Sedelmaier. "And at one point, they were talking about an action-figure line," he revealed. "But I don’t know if that’s going to happen."
So has working on this high-profile golf-themed campaign inspired Sedelmaier to take up the sport? Actually, no. "I tried to golf once when I was in high school," he related, laughing. "When I swung, the ball stayed and the club flew."
