Directorial team Happy has extended its reach beyond the emotion described in its moniker via two commercials that are sad, dramatic and poignant. Indeed, the message being delivered by Happy is anything but—particularly in the more shocking of the two PSAs, "Hallway," which opens on a young woman whose naked body we see in silhouette as she dries off after a shower, and drops the towel onto the bathroom floor.
Her face is revealed to us in a fogged-up mirror. She picks up a pair of scissors and begins snipping her hair. Then the phone rings. She rushes to answer it, but trips over the towel and lands on the hallway floor with a thud. We see that she has been stabbed by the scissors she was holding. Bleeding, she lies motionless, presumably dead.
A super appears, which reads: "Why do we make bad decisions when we’re naked?"
The spot then cuts to a black screen, which displays a parting super identifying the intended sponsor: "Youth AIDS.org," accompanied by the slogan, "Act now. Live later."
The other PSA in the campaign, "Kitchen," is similarly themed. It depicts a naked young man in the kitchen. He rushes to a toaster that is billowing out smoke, and attempts to fix it by sticking a knife inside to pry a piece of bread loose. When the metal knife comes in contact with the electrical wiring, he is electrocuted and falls to the floor. The same supered rhetorical question from "Hallway" then appears.
"Hallway" is jarring in that the graphic ending isn’t expected. By contrast, in "Kitchen"—which also has an ill-fated conclusion—there’s a sense that disaster is about to unfold as the man reaches for a knife to fix the toaster. Both spots carry the forceful impact needed to convey the desired message, although neither mentions AIDS until the YouthAIDS end tag appears. Clearly, shock value is necessary to gain the attention of the target audience before safe sex and HIV/AIDS prevention can be addressed.
The two-spot campaign came out of DDB New York and was originally created for YouthAIDS, a group formed to help heighten HIV- and AIDS-prevention awareness among teenagers and young adults. However, YouthAIDS declined to use the ads due to their controversial nature, leaving DDB to now try to find another sponsor in the AIDS/HIV-prevention field. The core creative team was comprised of executive creative director John Staffen, copywriter James Bray, art director D.J. Pierce and producer Lorraine Schaffer.
Members of the Happy collective who worked on the campaign were Guy Shelmerdine, Lucas Spaulding and Richard Farmer. Happy’s spot roost is bicoastal production house, Smuggler. Executive producers on the job were Smuggler’s Patrick Milling Smith and Brian Carmody. Jeff Miller line produced for Smuggler. DP was Mott Hupfel.
Spaulding, who cuts spots via MacKenzie Cutler, New York, additionally served as offline/online editor and sound designer. Colorist was Milan Boncich of Moving Images, New York. Audio mixer was Marc Healy of MacKenzie Cutler.
