expertise into Internet projects and viral campaigns that often have little or nothing to do with traditional spotwork.
To get an idea of the kinds of things expected from agency producers these days, SHOOT took a look at a few integrated campaigns with major Internet components. The producers attached to those campaigns say the projects were truly challenging and are changing the nature of the work they do.
With three recent Internet campaigns under his belt, Rupert Samuel, co-head of production at Crispin Porter+Bogusky (CP+B), Miami, is one of the more accomplished producers in the new realm. Samuel produced Mini Cooper’s "Men of Metal" campaign, which was built around a gaggle of fictional Web sites created by CP+B and designed to foster an urban legend of a Good Samaritan robot built by a fictional scientist from Mini Cooper parts. The robot helps motorists in trouble in the Oxford, England, region.
"Everything that we do now is going to have some form of interactive aesthetic to it," Samuel says. "For us as producers, it’s pushing us in all different directions. The breadth and scope of work for the average producer is way greater than it used to be.
"The good thing about these interactive processes that we have going on here," Samuel continues, "is that they need a lot of fleshing out all across the board. You not only act as the producer, but you also push the creative side of it too. Roles aren’t as defined and our agency is starting to work a lot more like that now."
Samuel, who shares the title of director of broadcast production with David Rolfe, says the two of them are working out ways for their department to facilitate the needs of the agency’s interactive department. "The lines are blurring," Samuel remarks. "What we’re shooting often turns into the Web and viral campaigns. We try to talk a lot earlier in the process now. We help push the creative for them, and also help them understand what’s doable and what might not be. A lot of the interactive stuff we’re doing now is pushing the limits of what people have done prior to this."
The campaign that the New York office of Wieden+Kennedy (W+K) put together last year to launch Sega’s ESPN NFL football video game took on a life of its own, says producer Temma Shoaf, who found herself swept up in it. The marketing team had to respond to postings on its bogus Beta-7 Web site on a daily basis. "The campaign shifted gears literally every day," Shoaf relates. "Everyday was just hitting the ground running, pulling meetings together, getting everybody going in this different direction now. I am a TV commercial producer and this Internet stuff is crazy. Everybody had so many ideas about what should happen to Beta-7 next. When I was working on this, it was almost like being a project manager."
The "Veer" campaign that Buder Engel and Friends, San Francisco, put together for Dr. Martens boots and shoes consists of six Internet films. Agency producer LauraLe Wunsch says the project cast her more in the role of a documentary producer than a spot producer, with new responsibilities.
"It was very different [from traditional spotwork]," Wunsch comments. "We spent a month and a half researching, to try to find the people we thought would best represent what we were trying to communicate for Doc Martens, that they’re real and authentic. Because this was a documentary situation, the creative team at the agency didn’t have much control over the shoot. They were only able to do so much. It was very difficult for them. As a producer, it was difficult to be a liaison and make sure the creatives had some input."
Integrated projects are becoming increasingly common—Converse and Diesel both recently debuted a series of short films on Web sites that loosely tie the brand into the work. And W+K just debuted a new campaign for Sharp’s Aquos flat screen TV. The ads, grouped under the banner "Perspectives," includes TV components directed by Errol Morris of bicoastal/international @radical.media, and are designed to entice viewers to explore the Web site www.moretosee.com.
As projects such as these become more common, it becomes immediately clear that there are virtually no rules in cyber-marketing, and that a job title like agency producer means different things in different situations.
Burger King
On Oct. 18, Burger King’s "Chicken Fight" campaign hit the airwaves in the form of a spot called "The Chicken Sandwich World Championship—Training," directed by The Glue Society out of bicoastal/international @radical.media, and accompanied by a Web site, www. chickenfight.com.
CP+B’s Samuel and Rolfe served as executive agency producers on the package; Corey Bartha served as agency producer. Samuel says he learned a lot about integrating the TV and Internet elements of a campaign from doing the earlier "Subservient Chicken" effort, consisting of an eponymous Web site and three spots helmed by Rocky Morton of bicoastal/international Morton Jankel Zander (MJZ).
"That was the first big interactive project we did with BK," says Samuel of the hit Web site that featured a person in a chicken suit reacting to instructions given by the Web site user. "It became a big hit. We shot this chicken doing a million different things. We went around and asked everybody at the agency, ‘If you saw a chicken in a room and you could ask it to do anything, what would it be? Think of anything you can.’ They programmed it in a way that it would pick up key words and the chicken would do anything you asked it to do."
Samuel used a freelancer to shoot all the chicken moves in an apartment in one day. "It wasn’t that long ago, but it was when we weren’t working as tightly with interactive, and it was kind of like last-minute stuff," he says. "Now we like to plan things more. And as we’re all learning how to deal with each other, we’re becoming more effective. When you see this chickenfight.com come on, it’s going to be pretty impressive."
The new site features two chicken-suited actors playing Spicy and T.C., and fighting it out in an Internet game for the Chicken World Championship. "The game is based on video imagery rather than these two chickens fighting in real life," Samuel explains. "My role is to tie the interactive shoot onto the actual shoot we were doing. We set up this big stadium that was supposed to look like a Tijuana bull-fighting ring. We did a whole green screen shoot with the chickens fighting each other, so that when you wanted to program the game, you could take these individual images and put them together and make the things fight."
Samuel hired a line producer in Miami to work on the interactive side of the project alongside the @radical.media line producer. "I had somebody who was geared a hundred percent to dealing with the interactive side while we’re on the shoot," he reports. "We had a little behind-the-scenes video crew on the shoot itself, getting background imagery and footage. They gathered all the material they needed to make the site happen."
Dr. Martens
The six films for the "Veer" campaign that Buder Engel produced for Dr. Martens were the first long-form projects that Wunsch had worked on, but she had strong feelings about how to proceed from the beginning.
"I knew we could have gone with a commercial director, but I felt strongly it should be a documentary filmmaker," she says. "We had a very low budget. We met a little over a year ago. We wanted to go out and find some people, like construction workers—physical people who had demanding jobs—that fit the Doc Martens brand personality."
Wunsch finally decided that the filmmaker would be Doug Pray of Oil Factory Films, Beverly Hills, Calif., who has done the feature-length documentaries Scratch (’01) on hip-hop DJs, and Hype (’96) on the Northwest alternative rock scene.
"What was different about this project for me was that they were documentary films and I had to approach it as that [rather than as a commercial]," Wunsch says. "They would be online, and that was a factor as well. When you produce something that is going online, you also have to produce material that is going to drive people to that Web site, and once they’re there, to make sure that what we’re offering is engaging enough to hold their attention for more than thirty seconds."
There were no scripts and no casting sessions for the films, which included Between Lanes and Corner Office. "Research was ninety percent of the job, to find the people who were going to be interesting and fit the detailed description of what we were looking for to exemplify the characteristics of the brand," Wunsch says. "We couldn’t know if the people were going to be interesting enough to hold people’s attention until we got there and did it, so there was a great risk involved. We spent a great deal of time interviewing them, getting video on them. It was intense research. That was something different from anything I’d done before."
Shooting documentary-style meant little agency or client control over the films. "We had a day and a half with each person," Wunsch says. "The director couldn’t manipulate too much. We were basically following people throughout their day. As a producer, it became interesting and challenging to create trust."
Wunsch found the freedom of the new form "refreshing and wonderful," but also challenging. "Managing time and money and creative resources becomes a little more challenging because there is this more open feeling," she says. "The parameters are not so clear."
Sega
When the W+K creative team on Sega got together with producer Shoaf last year to kick around ideas for a viral campaign to build buzz for the new ESPN NFL football game, an early thought was to bring in The Haxans, the directing team that did The Blair Witch Project, which successfully used the Web to build interest. The agency ended up turning to Eduardo Sanchez and Michael Monello, two members of The Haxans, who direct out of bicoastal/international Chelsea Pictures.
"They were awesome," Shoaf praises. "We ended up launching four different Web sites, and they did most of the producing. They were really into the idea and making a lot of different things happen."
Using a mix of Web sites, targeted e-mails, wild postings and traditional print and TV, the campaign tells the story of a fictional game tester, Beta-7, who begins a crusade against the launch of the game because he says it makes him black out and start tackling people. The tester’s homepage is www.beta-7.com. Earlier this year, the campaign won a Grand Clio at the inaugural Content & Contact Awards, as well as a Gold Pencil at The One Show for exceptional innovation in a campaign.
Shoaf had never done anything like it before. "[First] I was put on the TV campaign," she relates. "Then we needed somebody who was going to be involved on a daily basis with all the team members who could manage the Web project, and I got thrown into that as well." Kuntz & Maguire—Tom and Mike, respectively—of MJZ, directed the TV portion of the package, which featured NFL star Warren Sapp and comedian Tracy Morgan.
It became a day-to-day job. "We would log on to see what was happening on the Web site, and inevitably a gamer would [write something] that would spur a creative idea for how it could go," Shoaf says. "We would post little daily logs and then somebody would log on and they had a little discussion area and different discussions came up. If a gamer responded, ‘This is bogus and I’ll tell you why,’ then we’d try to prove to that one guy that this is not bogus. I don’t know if we were necessarily prepared for how crazy it was going to be."
Learning the Internet jargon and immersing herself in the campaign were positive experiences, Shoaf says. "More and more, you see things going in that direction, so it behooves you to understand it," she reasoned. "I like shooting film, but it was a good experience to have under my belt." I
