Everything about this spot—except the punchline—plays like a scenario in which we viewers are seemingly a step ahead of what’s about to happen. A car full of boisterous teenage boys, their radio blasting out high-decibel music, speeds along a rural road. Clearly this noisy joyride is going to run into the law.
Sure enough, behind a "Welcome to Wisconsin" billboard lurks a highway patrol car and a pair of state troopers at the ready. As the unsuspecting teens zoom past, the officers are suddenly in hot pursuit, their siren blaring.
The boys pull over. The young driver’s facial expression clearly shows that he realizes he and his friends are "busted."
"You know why I pulled you over?" asks the highway patrol officer.
"No," responds the sullen driver, hoping that ignorance may get him and his buddies off the hook.
But here the story takes a twisted detour: A new camera angle reveals that each youngster has a chicken roosting in his hair.
A supered graphic explains, "It is illegal to enter Wisconsin with a chicken on your head." Another suggests that Attorneys.com will "make sense of the law"—implying that the company’s Web site (www.1-800-Attorneys.com) can provide a remedy for those who need help in dealing with the intricacies and sometimes bird-brained technicalities of our legal system.
The ad then returns to the teens—now under arrest—standing alongside the road. Each youngster still has a fowl on his head. One teen leans toward another, pleading the unfairness of his plight: "It’s not even my chicken."
"Chicken Offenders" was one of two spots in a campaign directed by Scotty Bergstein of Santa Monica-based Area 51 Films. Mark Thomas executive produced and Daniel Stewart served as producer for Area 51. The package was shot on location in Vancouver, B.C., by DP Paul Goldsmith.
The other spot, "Milk," follows a similar tack as state troopers answer an emergency on a remote Texas farm. "He’s got her out there in the barn! Do something!" shouts a woman in her nightgown, from the farmhouse porch. The men catch the intruder red-handed milking a cow not his own—a violation of Texas law. "I’ll be out in sixty days," he promises bossy in a whisper, before the troopers take him away in handcuffs.
Bergstein delivers the scenarios as if they were tense crime dramas, which helps to realize the intended com-edy. "Commercial humor generally is becoming more subtle, more sophisticated and interesting," he said. "In commercials like these, the story rules. It makes you think a little more and laugh a little harder."
The offbeat two-spot package was conceived by a creative team at McCann-Erickson, Dallas, consisting of chief creative officer Mark Daspit, senior art director Matt Klug, senior copywriters Michael Platt and Will Clarke; and producer Stephanie Murdoch.
Contributors from Post Op, Dallas, were offline editor Michael Van Kamer, assistant editor Robert Hague, online editor Gerlinde Scharinger, audio engineer Collyer Spreen and assistant audio engineer Ryder McNatt.
Colorist was Beau Leon of R!OT, Santa Monica.
Claude Letessier of Santa Monica-based Primal Scream served as sound designer.
