JESSICA YU COMMITS TO QUITTING Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu (Breathing Lessons), whose commercial production roost is Nonfiction Spots, Santa Monica, has directed a campaign for GlaxoSmithKline’s Commit anti-smoking lozenges out of Arnold New York that entailed chronicling the lives of four real people–Lisa, Keith, Matt and Kim–as they try to quit tobacco with the help of Commit. The television spots about Lisa are just hitting the air now. Lisa is a new mother who has been smoking a pack of cigarettes daily for 15 years. The footage is unscripted, recorded by a camera installed in her home coupled with material shot in her natural surroundings. There are a total of seven commercials centered on Lisa and covering about a three-month span. Each spot is set to run for one week at a time and audiences will be able to track Lisa’s progress. At press time, Keith’s episodic spots were about to hit the web. The Lisa commercials will also be on the site, commitlozenge.com, which additionally features interactive tools like the Commit Quit Tracker, an interactive graph that tracks a user’s experiences and progress during the 12-week quit period. Site visitors can create their own trackers and see composite results of others. Footage is embedded at different points in the tracker so relevant webisodes play when the user rolls over a particular juncture in the timeline. All four of the quitters’ stories will be part of a branded content documentary. The rationale for the campaign is rooted largely in research, which shows that some 97 percent of smokers who try to quit fail so they often don’t know what a true success story looks like. The Commit reality campaign hopes to fill this void, showing the highs and lows experienced by those who are struggling to kick their addiction. The Arnold creative team included chief creative officer John Staffen, creative directors Andrew Cahill and Ken Ferris as well as producer Tim Speidel. Loretta Jeneski and Michael Degan executive produced for Nonfiction, with Iza Muchlinski serving as producer. The DP was Josh Salzman, and Mark Imgrund edited via Nonfiction….
CELEBHEADS Former Deutsch creatives David Rosen and Cheryl Van Ooyen have written and directed Celebheads, a series that debuted last month on VH1 Mobile and at VH1.com. Each episode is a short-form parody that uses the first person camera technique to capture a celebrity’s POV–the first being that of Paris Hilton. Upcoming installments will parody the daily lives of noted actors, artists and politicians. Rosen and Van Ooyen, who are now pursuing directorial careers, also executive produced the series, which was created and produced by Men of Science in conjunction with VH1….
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS Editor Staci Le Van has joined the Austin, Texas office of charlieuniformtango. She shifts over from the editorial shop’s Dallas facility where her work has included commercials for such clients as Cellular One, Curves, Goody’s, Metro PCS, Comcast and the Discovery Channel. Prior to charlieuniformtango, Le Van cut for four years with The Whitehouse, Santa Monica….Rob Abeyta, Jr., who most recently was an art director at Nike, has come aboard advertising and design studio 72andSunny, El Segundo, Calif., in an art director capacity.
