Whassup!" is no longer the catch phrase du jour, but "Whooooo!" may pick up where the once-popular Budweiser adage left off. For those who missed the Super Bowl last Sunday, "Whooooo!" is the triumphant battle cry of Terrible Terry Tate. The Tate character—whose relentless work-a-day life is the subject of a new campaign for Reebok—was introduced in a :60 during the Big Game; teaser promos began airing in mid-January.
The similarities between Budweiser’s "True" campaign—which brought "Whassup!" to the masses—and "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker" go beyond an enthusiastic utterance beginning with the letter "W." Both are based on short films that were directed by relatively unknown filmmakers, and both of those filmmakers were then hired by a client and its ad agency to shoot adapted versions of their films for commercial play. In the case of "True," the strategy worked brilliantly. Director Charles Stone III’s Budweiser spots—via DDB Chicago and C&C/Storm Films, Brooklyn, N.Y.—won the Grand Prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival in 2000, among other accolades. Stone also landed a feature deal at Dimension Films.
Now just hitting the field, Reebok’s campaign is based on Terry Tate: Office Linebacker, a four-minute DV film written and directed by Los Angeles-based filmmaker Rawson Thurber. The film caught the eye of Reebok and its agency, The Arnell Group, New York.
Where "Terry Tate" differs from "True" is in its scope. Thurber was not only commissioned to write and helm several ads, but four short films as well, which will air on a dedicated Terry Tate Web site.
It’s not a surprising move, given the recent spate of branded entertainment efforts. As chronicled in SHOOT, several retailers are getting into the advertainment game—i.e. making films that are actually commercials. Among them are clothing retailer Aéropostale, Nissan and, perhaps most notably, BMW, with its successful Web-based "The Hire" series out of Fallon Minneapolis.
Short films are not the only avenue marketers are looking at to woo an increasingly fragmented television audience. Pepsi and Visa are reported to have inked deals with the WB network to have their products and services featured on Live From Tomorrow, one of the first primetime broadcast network shows to be shown without commercials. The show, described as a live variety/ news/entertainment program, is set to debut this summer. Additionally, a Silicon Valley start-up called There has created an online world à la "The Sims," a popular video game. In the There world, which would require a paid subscription for participation, users could also visit sites within the virtual world that are created by real-world companies. For example, a ski resort could pay the company to create a virtual version online, and subscribers, in turn, could pay additional fees to visit it.
SOFT SELL
Peter Arnell, president of The Arnell Group, was unavailable at press time, but others involved in the Reebok project speculated that the strategy from the beginning was to take the soft-sell approach typical of advertainment fare. Thurber also reports that the client and agency gave him a lot of support and creative freedom, and there weren’t any notes in the vein of "more product shots." Rather, the director says, "Reebok accepted the fact that if they tried too hard, it would be uncool." Hence, the only evidence of Reebok’s hand in the spots can be found in a brief mention and in a logo embossed on Tate’s apparel.
Independent producer Jason Mercer—who produced Thurber’s original DV film and co-produced the Reebok package—also suggests that the athletic company wasn’t looking for your run-of-the-mill ad campaign. Terry Tate "is not the kind of thing that would have fallen out of a brainstorming session at an ad agency," he says. Thus, it could be assumed that Reebok’s interest in the project speaks to the retailer’s desire for a different kind of branding effort.
Time will tell if "Tate" will make a "True"-like impact, but the campaign has already landed its creator representation as a commercial helmer—Thurber recently signed with Santa Monica-based F.M. Rocks. He also has representation for features and television via the bicoastal Paradigm Agency.
And Reebok, for one, seems confident in the project. Its inclusion in the Super Bowl marks the retailer’s first appearance on the Big Game in nearly a decade.
MEET TERRY TATE
Standing 6 feet, 6 inches tall, and weighing in at 300 pounds, Tate is a star in the field of office athletics. As the story goes, the fictitious linebacker was hired by Ron Felcher, CEO of Felcher & Sons. Weary from watching too many of his staffers goofing off, wasting time and office supplies, and generally falling short of expectations, Felcher decided to "think outside the box," and hired Tate to tackle the problem.
And tackle Tate does, quite literally. Besides "Whooooo!" Tate is also known to shout, "The pain train’s comin’!" before taking out a naughty office employee. For the most part, the spots are set within the confines of Felcher & Sons, but much of the footage looks like something seen on the field during ABC’s Monday Night Football. In "Kill the Joe," for instance, an employee is tackled for pouring the last of the coffee and not brewing another pot. Other office sins that invoke Tate’s ire are taking long lunches, not recycling, walking away from a jammed photocopier and playing computer solitaire.
The series of four-minute films from which the TV spots were cut were Terry Tate: Office Linebacker, Draft Day, Vacation and Office Athlete of the Century. In the latter, Tate is honored by OSPN, the Office Sports Programming Network, for "bringing pain and glory to the office world." In Vacation, Tate is sent on a mandatory holiday after having worked 1,000 straight days at Felcher & Sons. The result? The resort he stays at becomes the picture of efficiency, as Tate turns his gridiron skills on bellhops and room service staffers.
Thurber, a ’99 graduate of the masters program in film at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, says the idea originally germinated from two things: "I love football and hate working in an office." He wrote a six-page script, and—with financing from now defunct Propaganda Films—shot the original short.
"This was back in the halcyon days of the Internet, when shorts were actually popular," Thurber explains. "It looked awful, but it was funny." The Sundance Film Festival thought so, too—the original DV film was accepted into the competition last year. By that time, however, Reebok had committed to doing a Tate campaign, and Thurber was asked to withdraw from the indie film fest.
In the meantime, a crew for the Reebok shoot was starting to take shape, including DP Eric Haase (George Lucas In Love). Bicoastal film company Hypnotic—which had a hand in getting the original film into the hands of Reebok and The Arnell Group—signed on as the production company, with Doug Liman (director of Swingers and Go, who also helms select spot assignments via Independent Media, Santa Monica) and David Bartis serving as executive producers. In addition to Mercer, producers were Hypnotic’s Steve Hein and Gary Bryman. Miriam Franklin produced for The Arnell Group.
In the summer of ’02, Thurber et al. began filming. The only catch was that the project had to be done on spec, with no guarantee that it would ever air. Editor Jason Painter of Swietlik Editorial, Santa Monica, had been recommended to Thurber by a colleague, director Dan Rush of Palomar Pictures, Los Angeles. In spite of a limited budget, Painter "believed in ‘Terry Tate’ … so I went to bat for the project," he says.
Soon, the boutique edit house was consumed with all things Terry Tate. Painter was assisted by Charlie Keating; Swietlik executive producer Rebecca Jasmine and Chris Girard produced, with the company’s Mitch Gardiner serving as online editor. Colorist was Bob Curreri of The Syndicate, Santa Monica.
Painter also enlisted Comma Music, Santa Monica and Chicago, which composed the score and created the sound design. An eclectic range of musical styles such as a German polka, a classical string quartet, and a cheesy sports show theme were used in the score. Credit goes to composers Larry Pecorella, David Hutten and Justin Hori; sound designers Hori and Pete Schmidt; and executive producer Bryan Rheude. Additional credit goes to audio mixers Loren Silber and Stephen Dickson of POP Sound, Santa Monica, and freelance graphic designer Sinbad.
Despite all the work put into the campaign, "Terry Tate" got off to a slow start. Thurber presented cuts to the client and agency in the fall, but 19 spots and four short films into the process, nothing was happening. Even though the campaign received a positive reaction, there were no apparent plans for the spots or films to air.
Things changed, however, when Reebok finalized a 10-year contract with the NFL. On Christmas Eve, word came that "Terry Tate" might bow on the Super Bowl. "It’s always darkest before it goes completely black," jokes Thurber, "and then you get a Super Bowl spot. It’s an age-old story."
