By Christine Champagne

Mike Monello doesn’t have a reel of thirty-second spots. He’s a new breed of director, one who creates interactive Internet-based narratives for advertising clients like Audi, Sega and Sharp. Monello does this work through Campfire, a New York-headquartered shop that bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures is an investor in; Monello is one of the partners in Campfire.

    While directors who specialize in traditional commercials can dart from one project to the next, Monello can find himself immersed in a job for months. Case in point: he spent a large portion of 2005, telling an intriguing tale for Audi of America through “The Art of the Heist,” an integrated campaign designed to promote the Audi A3 across multiple platforms. “The Art of the Heist” began in April 2005 and culminated this past July.

The campaign, which Campfire worked on with McKinney, Durham, N.C., kicked off with the theft (staged, of course) of an Audi A3 from a New York City dealership, which led to an alternate reality game (ARG) that plunged players into a complex thriller involving art retriever Nisha Roberts; her boyfriend Ian Yarborough, a technical whiz; and a famed video-game designer called Virgil Tatum.

The story unfolded in real-time, with players gleaning information and clues through everything from live events to billboards to multiple Web sites (complete with documents, blueprints and security camera video).

The general framework was laid out at the beginning of the project, but the storyline itself took twists and turns that weren’t expected. For example, the villain of the story changed based on how the audience perceived the story, Monello reveals. “When we originally launched, it was set up to be Virgil, and we had concerns before launch–whispered concerns–about whether we were going to be able to keep the mystery going with only three main characters,” he explains. “So we started introducing other characters who could be the villain. We needed to make sure that we set it up in such a way that in the end when we revealed who the villain was it was believable–that the audience could have followed along and pegged him as the villain and not feel like we just pulled it out of nowhere.” (The actual villain turned out to be Emile Smithson, Virgil Tatum’s head programmer.)

Of course, it’s hard enough–if not nearly impossible–to make substantial changes to a spot once a client has signed off on a concept. But clients must be more flexible when it comes to the interactive arena. “We’re really upfront about that,” states Monello. “Usually, one of the first things we’ll even tell them is that interactivity requires an ability to change on the fly, and that is what makes it so unique. If you try to create everything from beginning to end upfront before you launch, then you’re really not using the Internet for what it’s most suited to do, to be a two-way form of communication.”

 

The Witching Hour

If you’re wondering where Monello’s Internet smarts come from, he wasn’t a computer major. He was actually trained in traditional filmmaking techniques, earning a B.S. degree in motion picture technology from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. While in school, he served as the night manager for the Macintosh lab, “and that was at a time when the Internet was only at universities, so I got email before anybody I knew had it. The Web wasn’t formed yet, but Usenet and Gopher and some of those areas were building up, and that’s when I really started to think about [the possibilities].”

When he graduated from college in ’93, Monello took a job as director of media and marketing for Enzian Theater/Florida Film Festival. Enzian Theater ran the film festival and was a non-profit. “So I had to learn to do things really guerilla-style,” relates Monello. “I put up a Web site for the festival–and this was before businesses were on the Web. When I launched the Web site, launching a Web site for a business was so new we actually had front-page coverage in the business section of the Orlando Sentinel.”

Monello quickly realized that the Internet was “the great equalizer. I remember thinking, ‘Look at the Web site for the Florida Film Festival. It looks just as good as the site for Universal Studios. In fact, our looks better.’ “

It was in the late ’90s, however, that Monello truly saw the power of the Internet when he and some film school friends formed Haxan Films and shot a little low-budget indie (Monello was a producer) called The Blair Witch Project, which they promoted via a Web site launched a year before the film was even released. The site itself was a phenomenon, stirring frantic interest in the movie, and sparking rumors that it was based on a true story.

According to Monello, Steve Wax, president of Chelsea Pictures, recognized early on that the strategy used to market The Blair Witch Project would also benefit advertising clients and approached him and the others in the Haxan Films collective when it screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Haxan Films signed with Chelsea Pictures for representation, and Monello ultimately directed Sega’s “Beta 7” Internet campaign out of Wieden + Kennedy, New York, through Chelsea Pictures in 2003 (Campfire had yet to be formed at this point).

“Beta 7,” best described as live Internet theater, played out in real time in the four months prior to the launch of Sega’s ESPN NFL Football game. The story revolved around a guy named Beta 7, who claimed to be a beta tester for Sega who thought that his work for the company was causing him to have bizarre, uncontrollable symptoms, including urges to tackle people. Beta 7’s story was told via multiple Web sites and viral videos and voicemails among other means.

This campaign, like others Monello has worked on, included spots that were farmed out to other directors. One has to ask: Does Monello, who has yet to direct an actual commercial, have any interest in doing so? “I’m interested in directing thirty-second spots that are linked to the interactive campaigns we are doing,” Monello says, noting that, at this point, agencies tend to view commercials as a separate element that should be handled by a different director. Monello begs to differ: “In a scenario like this, I feel like if a spot is more integrated and feels more a piece of the story [we’re telling online], then it becomes more effective.”

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