On Nov. 11, 1995—Veterans Day—a site on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated as a national monument to those who fought in World War II. A fundraising effort, spearheaded by former Sen. Bob Dole and Frank W. Smith, president/CEO of the Federal Express Corporation, is underway to raise money to build the memorial, which is set to break ground on Veterans Day this year.
Numerous individuals and corporations have donated money, and discount retailer Wal*Mart is currently airing "WWII," a :30 via GSD&M, Austin, Texas, as part of the company’s effort to help raise funds for the national monument.
"It blew us away when we found out about it. There is no national monument [dedicated] to WWII. There are memorials all around the country, but there isn’t one like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C.," explains Michael Blair, executive VP/creative director at GSD&M. "We wanted to accomplish two things with the spot. Obviously we wanted to raise money to help build the WWII memorial in Washington, and at the same time we wanted to salute [Wal*Mart] associates who fought in WWII."
Last summer, Wal*Mart approached GSD&M—which handles the retailer’s "Values" campaign—to help with the fundraising effort. Blair says that early on, the agency decided to use the basic concept of one of the spots in the campaign: "Veterans," directed by Rocky Powell of Rock House Films, Dallas. The ad, which airs around Memorial and Veterans Day, features images of Wal*Mart associates who have served in the armed forces. "We thought that was a good vehicle for doing the WWII spot as well," Blair says.
To make the spot, simply called "WWII," more poignant, Blair decided to use footage shot during WWII interspersed with on-camera recollections from Wal*Mart employees who served during the war. Powell helmed the interviews with the Wal*Mart employees. Agency producer Dave Mead turned to Archive Films, New York, to find the war footage required to make the :30, a longer two-minute video that would play in Wal*Mart stores, and a seven-minute piece that would be played at managers’ meetings for the retailer.
Wartime
"We were excited about this particular project, because we probably have the largest archive of World War II footage. It’s always a thrill when they’re looking for a lot of material on that and you get the request," says Neal Avener, senior account executive at Archive Films. "We discussed it with our research department, and they spent a couple of days gathering material and compiling tapes for [GSD&M]. Then we started FedExing three-quarter-inch screener tapes down to Dave."
Mead and Blair reviewed the footage and Blair sat down with editor Tobin Holden, of Holden Editorial, Austin, to cut the long version for the managers’ meeting. The game plan was to choose stock footage that augmented comments made on camera by Wal*Mart employees who served in the armed forces and auxiliary services during the war. Blair, who is credited as creative director/copywriter on the project, also wrote the score in collaboration with arranger Carl Thiel of Carl Thiel Music, Austin.
The commercial opens with quiet orchestral music as a voiceover lists famous WWII battles over Archive-supplied footage. The spot features images such as a Zero fighter plane blowing apart under anti-aircraft fire above a U.S. warship; Marines raising the American Flag over Iwo Jima; and a squadron of soldiers filing up a hill. The narrator then gives credit to Americans who fought on the home front as an image of "Rosie the Riveters" work on the wing of an airplane, and a line of young Red Cross nurses smile nervously into a film camera. To top off the sequence, the scene shifts to the joyous celebration in Times Square on VE Day.
In the final segment, the voiceover talks about the lack of a WWII national monument and a plea to contribute to the war memorial fund, as a series of Wal*Mart employees hold up pictures of themselves from the ’40s. Supers identify the veterans by first name and where they each served. The final shot is a still photograph of a young Army officer who morphs into the Wal*Mart employee he is now, identified as "Joe, European Theater."
The two-minute video that plays in Wal*Mart stores is an elaboration of the same theme. A major difference is that the expanded time allows for the veterans to make comments on camera about the duty they felt to fight, and of the horror of going to war. The video ends, as the spot does, with a pledge by Wal* Mart to match up to $3 million in contributions to build the memorial.
The seven-minute version expands on the comments by veterans on what it was like to fight in WWII, and uses much more stock footage. The two videos and spot use a number of shots from Archive, a fact that pleases Avener. "They licensed eighty or so clips from us," he says. "We were the only archive involved. I was very pleased with that because they had solicited some material from other houses—at least one that I know of—and they wound up getting it all from us. It was a big success story for us as well."
Blair says the amount and variety of footage supplied by Archive made cutting the package much easier. "I already had the footage before I started cutting the spot, and I knew what I wanted to use in terms of the war footage," says Blair. "It was a period of a week-and-a-half from when we shot until we were ready to ship."
The only difficulty GSD&M encountered in production, Blair says, was finding veterans willing to talk about their wartime experiences. To get enough comments to fill out the seven-minute piece, Blair had to go outside Wal*Mart to find veterans willing to discuss their experiences. The spot, however, features only Wal*Mart employees. "For that seven-minute video, we found as many Wal*Mart employees who were veterans who wanted to talk about it; then we supplemented it with other veterans," explains Blair.
Blair is pleased with feedback from both the client and the WWII veterans. "I haven’t heard a negative reaction yet. It’s all been, ‘Thank you for helping recognize the fact that there’s not a memorial; thank you for helping to raise the money.’ "z
