If Doug Pippin and Lee St. James of Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, pulled up stakes and moved out to Hollywood to pursue a career in the movie business, they’d probably do pretty well. The creatives have a knack for longform storytelling, as evidenced by their work on the UBS PaineWebber "Because life is a continuing story" campaign, which ends with the tag: "UBS PaineWebber. Thank you." The ads promote the financial services firm, as well as let viewers know that UBS AG has merged with PaineWebber.
Pippin and St. James approached the project as if it were a movie right from the beginning. "We presented the script to the client in screenplay form," says the latter, senior VP/creative director/art director. "There were no boards. There were no animatics."
To their delight, the financial services firm loved the unconventional idea, and gave them the go-ahead to make their mini-movie. The campaign comprises four :60s that ingeniously interweave multiple plot lines. The spots have played continuously during shows such as Law & Order, 60 Minutes and The Practice, and have also run individually.
The campaign opens with an ad in which a middle-aged guy meets a saxophone player on a plane. The two strike up a conversation, during which the middle-aged man asks, "You make a good living?" The musician responds, "Well, I do what I love—in forty-three countries."
The interaction inspires the man, a wannabe musician himself, to call his financial advisor at UBS PaineWebber. "You want to take next year off? Let me talk to your accountant about the tax implications," the financial advisor responds, as a colleague hands him a CD and whispers, "I’m going to lunch."
The spot then cuts to another man, sitting in a coffee shop talking to his UBS PaineWebber financial advisor—who turns out to be the man who was going to lunch—in person. "So, how’s your dad doing?" the advisor inquires. "That’s what I really wanted to talk to you about," the client answers. The spot ends with this cliffhanger.
The second ad returns to this conversation, during which the client informs his financial advisor that he may have to place his father in a care facility. "The money is there," the advisor assures him. The camera pans down to a man sitting at the counter, answering a cell phone. His two sons are calling to make sure he’ll be meeting them later to discuss their construction business. Next the camera pans from their construction site, over a fence to a house in which a woman is on the phone with her financial advisor. She wants to arrange to help her newlywed daughter purchase a home. The TV is on as the woman speaks, and the camera slowly pans from her to the TV, where a financial reporter is seen interviewing a man at a tech expo. Once again, the spot ends with the phrase, "Because life is a continuing story."
In the third spot, it’s revealed that the reporter is over-weighted in tech stocks, and we meet a divorced dad who is happy to hear his daughter has gotten into college, but saddened to discover she’ll be moving to Boston. "I guess I didn’t figure on the school being three thousand miles away," he tells his advisor, who lets him know that the tuition will be covered by the zero-coupon bonds the man purchased.
The fourth spot opens on a businessman in India. Using his cell phone, he calls UBS PaineWebber to get information on a software company he is considering purchasing. Another financial advisor in the office consults with a couple regarding estate planning. The spot then cuts to a man strolling down a beautiful beach in Hawaii. He’s enjoying his retirement because he has invested wisely. As he strolls along, he spots a guy playing some really bad guitar. Upon closer inspection, we find that this guy is the man from the first spot—the one who told his financial advisor he wanted to take a year off. "Don’t quit your day job," the passerby cracks to himself as he passes the amateur musician. Actually, the guy was clearly able to quit his day job thanks to the advice he got from UBS PaineWebber.
It’s easy to understand the concerns of just about any of the people depicted in this campaign. Both Pippin and St. James admit they relate to the guy who quits his day job to spend a year kicking around playing the guitar. "You’re talking to two guys who would love to go back to Hawaii," laughs Pippin, senior VP/creative director/copywriter.
"But that’s a life issue, and a dream people have," he continues. "UBS PaineWebber clients tend to be an older group, and I think that when you get to a certain age, you start having thoughts like that; and if you’ve been successful, it’s nice to have somebody that you can call and say, ‘Listen, I’d like to take the next year off.’ "
"We tried to find scenarios that were credible and real," notes St. James. "Scenarios that really touched on human emotion. Doug and I have lived or we’ve known people that have lived these scenarios, and we just played them back and tried to make the spots as seamless as possible."
In order to make the commercials work, Pippin and St. James were both committed to the idea of hiring a director with a background in feature films. They quickly decided on Phil Joanou of bicoastal Villains, who directed the feature-length documentary U2: Rattle and Hum, and the films State of Grace and Entropy. "We knew from the first phone call with him that we were talking to the right person," Pippin says.
Joanou actually filmed the project, shot in Los Angeles and Hawaii, between last Thanksgiving and Christmas, as if he were, indeed, making a movie. "It was so cool. Doug and I were making our movie," relates St. James. "We were shooting a page of dialogue a day. That’s the way Phil approached it."
And the director remained involved in the process from beginning to end, taking part in everything from the transfer process to editing. While the shoot went flawlessly, the creatives were hit with some major news once it ended. They knew that UBS AG and PaineWebber were merging. What they didn’t know was that the company was changing its name to UBS PaineWebber. That meant they had to go back and digitally add UBS to the many shots that featured the PaineWebber logo.
It was a challenging task, but the ads appear flawless. Given the enthusiastic response to the campaign, Pippin and St. James say they expect that they’ll be shooting more longform spots for UBS PaineWebber. "That’s our intention," Pippin says. "We will find out in the next month or so."
Meanwhile, don’t be surprised if Pippin and St. James do make a movie someday. "We definitely have enough footage left over from the original campaign to make one," states Pippin.
