Talking animals on television are older than Mr. Ed. Even before TV, animals were talking all throughout mythology, prophesizing and prognosticating to whomever would listen. Some argue that using talking animals in commercials is an overdone gimmick. But it is a proven means of garnering people’s attention, and few can argue with that.
A recent Ameritrade spot that introduces a talking bull and bear separates itself from lesser talking-animal ads in a number of ways. For starters, the concept is not egregious: Animals are not talking just to sell products and/or services. In "Bull and Bear," the first of three initial spots starring the beastly duo, the talking bull represents more aggressive Wall Street traders, while the bear assumes the personality of the more reserved brokers.
Ameritrade, along with its agency Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago (O&M), and Aardman Animations, Bristol, England, has done much more than just assign its marketing message to the flapping gums of a precocious terrier or tabby. Instead, it has infused with personality two established icons: the bull and bear—longstanding symbols for the market forces that drive the prices of shares up and down.
"No one has done it like this," contended Barb Jurgens, managing partner/group management supervisor on the Ameritrade account for O&M—referring to the approach "Bull and Bear" takes with its audience. "On the agency side, all of us can see the potential."
In deciding to launch a campaign this year, Ameritrade challenged its agency partner to highlight the online broker’s services in one broad stroke of the humor brush—but to paint a line between Ameritrade’s services and those of its competitors. "[Some of the competition] tends to be very bullish—like E*Trade," pointed out Monna O’Brien, senior partner/director of broadcast production at O&M. "Other competitors, like TD Waterhouse, tend to be more reserved and bearish."
So, with one bullish and the other bearish, the chosen tactic was to be both. Herein lies the birth of the idea for a relationship between the bull and the bear. Both characters make their points and each is likeable in a different way, but the viewer is likely to choose sides. In this case though, whichever side you choose, the answer is always the same: Ameritrade.
"Money and finances are really serious business, but we are all human," noted Jurgens. "The bull and the bear are so engaging. I think that, over time, we will come to know them and develop them in ways that will be just so true to who they are. They are great brand characters."
The ad opens on the silvery reflection in a metal coffee pot. We hear the percussive noises that accompany a lunchtime diner crowd—scraping forks on plates and coffee cups clanking against saucers. The camera pans over the live-action coffee shop scene to center on the unlikely bull/bear twosome casually occupying a pair of stools at the counter. The spry voice of the bull pulls us into the center of the dialogue: "OK. Let’s do one-year predictions. You first." The bear—more reserved and along the lines of a Disney character—lays down the first snappy comeback: "I predict you’ll be on the menu." Immediately, we have a sense of the relationship between the two beasts, and of the tone of the commercial.
"Ooooh, zinger. Ya got me. C’mon," says the impatient bull and uses his hyper-evolutionary hooves to loosen the screw-top lid from the sugar dispenser. "Dow, five thousand. NASDAQ, eight hundred," considers the bear, and it is here that we know this isn’t just any old bull or bear. These are members of the bulls and bears—whom you’ve been hearing about all those years, making and breaking fortunes on Wall Street.
The bull aggressively leans into the bear’s personal space and squints his eyes. "Interesting. Wrooong. But interesting," states the cocky bull. "Get this," he continues, "Dow, twenty-five thousand. NASDAQ, eight thousand; give or take a grand," and with that the bull pushes the booby-trapped sugar over to the sweet-toothed bear.
"Or ten," shoots back the bear, only to empty the contents of the sugar container into his coffee.
"You know the difference between you and me?" queries the bull.
"Yeah, common sense," answers the bear, pushing the sugary mess to the side.
"No. You’re a pessimist. Nobody likes a pessimist," declares the bull as the waitress delivers the meals.
"Nobody likes a talking steak either," responds the slightly feisty bear, moving his hamburger in for a bite.
The commercial launches into a quick pitch about Ameritrade’s online promotions and 10-second service, and reminds the audience that no matter what the market brings, this broker can help. To cap the spot we are delivered back to the diner for one last gag:
Bull: Hey, aren’t you gonna leave a tip?
Bear (pointedly): Tipping is for cows.
THE APPROACH
Due to a fundamental change in the stock market over the last 100 years, today a great deal of the money at play is the property of the amateur investor. While Wall Street was once the domain of names like Rockefeller, Morgan and Carnegie, an exponentially larger group of 401(k) contributors and small individual investors now drives the stock exchange. "If you look at some of the figures on that, it is amazing how many people buy stock right now versus even fifteen years ago," said Jurgens. Advertising a complex service for a complex industry, aimed at an audience that varies in expertise from the novice to the passionate, presents an especially trying set of challenges. Beer is beer. Cars are cars. But pre-market lows on no-load funds, well … that’s another matter altogether. This is where the bull and the bear come into play. As icons they reach the broad audience that Ameritrade is targeting, without alienating or insulting anyone’s intelligence."
But making the bull and bear look perfect for Ameritrade’s marketing message was vital. In this case "perfect" meant photorealism pumped up with lots of personality. O&M ultimately turned to Aardman of Bristol, England, to produce the spot.
"We interviewed several different companies in the U.S., and Aardman was the only company that was offshore," said O’Brien. "What we found is that a lot of companies [could do the work well], but Aardman brings along with their CG experience the characters that they build. They are famous for Chicken Run and Creature Comforts, and the personalities are what make those characters so brilliant. We settled on Aardman [because] we wanted their expertise with the personalities. The technical expertise we could get from several places."
But the risk lay in using an animation house less experienced in CG. Aardman, the studio built by clay animation specialist Nick Park, has only had a full-blown CG department for approximately 18 months. Plus, the Ameritrade spot marked the first photorealistic animals to come out of the British production house. "We do get quite a lot of ads where we have to bring animals to life, but they are less realistic and more like characters," explained Aardman production assistant Vic Spurgeon. "This was quite unique in that the animals had to look completely believable and completely realistic, whereas often we get approached to design characters that look like animals but have human qualities or are quite cartoon-y."
Aardman takes a unique approach to computer animation—one that reflects the attention to detail that the firm brought to clay animation. "We knew this job could be really special and ground breaking for us," said Aardman director of animation Bobby Proctor. "Sure, realistic animals have been done before on many occasions, but they seem to lack real character; you can’t see what they’re actually thinking; there’s no real emotion. They just look like they’re chewing toffees or looking at their trainers for another treat. We just tried to make them live; everyday guys just hanging out in everyday places. At Aardman, the acting is our main passion and that is what we’re striving to bring over to our CG."
In order to reach that level of detail, a whole world needed to be created around the bull and the bear, and some interesting methods were employed to do that. "One of the things we did to help Aardman with the characters was writing bios on the bull and the bear," explained Jurgens. "We listed their favorite movies and celebrities and activities. One of the things about the bull was that at ten o’clock he was put on Ritalin, because he is always a little too excited."
Aardman took it a step further by hiring actors to play the scene out. "One thing we did before we started animating was get actors in for an improvised session," reported Spurgeon. "They looked at the live-action cut and listened to the dialogue and mimed along to it. That really helped our animators bring out the performances and find those little details that are so important."
One challenge Aardman faced was getting the bull to walk on its hind legs. (The bull does not walk in the "Bull and Bear" spot, but does in the following ads, set to air Feb. 25 and March 11.) When the characters have to be as real as these, making one of them do something very unrealistic proves difficult for the animators. "One of the obvious problems to solve was that none of us had ever seen a good anthropomorphic bull before," explained Proctor. "Weight and mass distribution from a quadruped to a biped is always a tricky scenario. In cartoon figures you can use more creative license, but to actually be convincing with realistic CG animals was much more difficult."
In the end, the bull and bear are naturally quirky. Ears flutter, nostrils flare, lips twitch, brows move forward and back—all timed perfectly with what is being said. It is possible that Aardman spent more time on the characters’ movements when they aren’t talking than when they are. And while elements like lighting and movement are key to placing animated characters into live-action scenes, Aardman’s expertise with natural movement and characteristic gestures may be equally important to achieving photorealism—and, possibly, harder to achieve. Certainly if the ultimate goal—one that no one has completely accomplished—is to utterly and completely trick the eye, then Aardman, with its particular focus on detail, has brought attention to yet another vital element.
