As a creative director, you might not run towards Sears as a creative opportunity," relates Dan Fietsam, senior VP/creative director at Young & Rubicam (Y&R), Chicago.
But Fietsam has had a significant hand in changing that perception—and more importantly, many prospective customers’ perceptions of the venerable retailer—through the current "Sears. Where Else?" campaign out of Y&R.
Since last spring, he and fellow Y&R senior VP/creative director Corey Ciszek, have been helping create advertising for Sears that has earned notice for its clever creativity and humor. The campaign, in which the first round of spots broke last fall, is a departure for the brand. And that was the client’s strategy, notes Fietsam: "Sears needed to get people’s attention again."
The creatives managed to do just that with spots that turn convention on its head, such as "Getting That Great Fall Look," directed by Paul Gay of Omaha Pictures, Santa Monica. The ad opens as a comely blonde woman struts and strikes model-like poses, wearing a black-and-white-checked blouse and black pants, with a black blazer slung over her shoulder. A deluge of wind-blown leaves swirls around her, and the slow-motion footage adds to the fashion-y tone of the spot. Cut to a spare-looking title card that identifies the merchandise—a checkmark pops up in the little box next to each product description. Cut back to the first scene, where the woman’s husband is revealed to be holding a whirring leaf blower in their front yard: The fun-loving couple has been mugging it up.
"Getting That Great Fall Look" kicked off Y&R’s "Where Else?" Sears campaign. Subsequent efforts for the retailer have the same format in terms of such elements as title cards, check boxes, voiceover and music. Fietsam notes that director Gay was instrumental in establishing the look and tone. In fact, he and Ciszek sent Gay’s Sears spots out when they were bidding the holiday spot package. "Paul is super-smart and has great subtle comedic timing," says Fietsam. "He set the standard."
New Directions
The process of creating a new campaign—and a new identity for Sears—began last year when the company called on Y&R Chicago, and Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), Chicago (both shops have worked on the account for a number of years) to do a "jump ball" for the branding assignment, explains Fietsam. The task posed several challenges—Fietsam notes that working on Sears is retail advertising, but the store sells a dizzying array of merchandise.
Y&R was awarded branding and promotional duties on the Sears account in July 2001; O&M continues to create ads for Sears’ automotive and hardware lines. After landing the assignment, the Y&R creatives worked on the creation of the "Where else?" tagline. "We chose to let Sears be Sears [in the advertising]," says Fietsam. "It’s a place you can go to buy a skirt and a leaf blower." Ciszek adds that the campaign had to be flexible enough to allow for different combinations of products, and to accommodate Sears’ holiday promotions and other sales. Y&R Chicago created an initial package of branding and promotional spots with the new tagline. These were helmed by Gay and the directing team of Speck/ Gordon (a.k.a. Will Speck and Josh Gordon), who are also represented by Omaha. Other agencies working on the Sears account have utilized the tagline and the look for their own spots.
"Sears wanted a really good, funny campaign," says Fietsam, "and it’s the client that has to want to do work like that. ‘The softer side of Sears’ was a great campaign for them in the past, and this is 180 degrees from that."
In "Fall Yard Prep," directed by Gay, a man uses hedge trimmers to cut a hole in the hedge bordering his yard and his neighbors’ property; the end shot reveals that the guy is now able to watch the big-screen TV in his neighbor’s house. Other Gay-helmed ads include the aforementioned "Leaf Blower." Speck/Gordon directed the promotional ads "Baby Sale," "Making a Commitment" and "Something Big."
Perhaps the most comical of the promotional spots is "Baby Sale," in which a young mother tries unsuccessfully to stop her baby from crying by waving a stuffed animal in front of the infant’s face, and using a blanket to play peek-a-boo. Her husband heads down the stairs while shooting camcorder footage. Not seeing the baby gate in his path, he trips and falls, ending up flat on his back. At the sight of this painful pratfall, the baby finally stops crying, and starts giggling. "I’ve got three little ones at home," says Fietsam, "and this is just like life at my house."
The beauty of the campaign is that the products are brilliantly woven into the storylines, and the humor comes out of those products. The title cards do the "heavy lifting" of the merchandise, and they seem to help the comic timing of the spots, Fietsam notes. The art direction was simply designed (for instance, there are no dissolves, only hard cuts) and the "workmanlike" graphics are also simple.
The creatives say they kept the Sears scripts purposefully simple, in order to provide room for the directors to add their own input. This strategy has paid off in spades, as all of the directors have been engaged in the creative. "The directors are a big part of why these ads are working so well," observes Fietsam.
The campaign also includes a cinema ad directed by David Ramser of bicoastal/international The Artists Company. In the spot, "Jim’s Your Brother," a man arrives home to find his wife standing in the living room with a deliveryman from Sears. The wife eagerly informs her husband of her discovery: The deliveryman, Jim, who has dropped off the couple’s new big-screen television set, is his brother. For a few moments, the man seems appropriately dumbfounded as he tries to process this revelation. Then he replies, "I can’t believe it—Sears sells Hitachi?"
Aware of the poor reception that movie audiences give commercials, the creatives designed the spot so that the reveal came at the last possible moment. "We purposely made it [open to the question], ‘Is it a commercial?’ until the very end," says Fietsam. "Our objective was to not get booed."
Happy Holidays
A second round of TV spots, centered around the holidays, was directed by Hank Perlman of bicoastal/international hungry man, and by Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks, Hollywood. (The latter company recently entered into an affiliation with bicoastal Morton Jankel Zander.) The Murro-helmed "Lumberjack" is a funny fantasy, in which a bathrobed woman holding a dinner plate comes upon a strapping lumberjack in tight jeans, chopping down a tree in a small clearing in a dark forest. "Is this dirty?" asks the lumberjack, with innuendo. After a cut to a title card, the camera returns to the woman, still wearing the bathrobe and holding the plate, but now in her kitchen, as her husband—who is not as attractive as the lumberjack—holds up a cup and asks if it’s dirty. Murro’s contributions helped the surreal nature of the storyline, says Fietsam. For instance, the director suggested setting the lumberjack story at night.
Perlman’s strength in casting and performance is evident in the four spots he helmed: "Dancing," "Farm Boys," "Family Portrait" and "Getting Serious." For instance, the offbeat "Farm Boys" features three 20-something red-haired triplets opening their gifts—flannel shirts—on Christmas morning with their red-haired mom. All three thank her in unison, then present her with a gift of their own: the George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine, and a package of meat. While opening the latter, the woman exclaims, "Oh, it’s ground beef," to which one of her boys responds, "No, it’s ground chuck."
"From the first frame, it’s a funny spot—the dialogue doesn’t even matter," says Fietsam of "Farm Boys." "Hank cast until past pre-pro. He finally found the triplets on the Internet at a Web site called triplets. com, and flew them in. He added a lot of funny details, like the one boy’s laugh after he corrects his mother that it’s ground chuck."
Fietsam and Ciszek each grew up in Illinois (Fietsam in Bellevue, Ciszek in the northwest suburb of Barrington), and have spent their entire professional careers in Chicago. They’ve worked as a team since they met at their first job, at O&M, Chicago, where they collaborated on Oshkosh and Sears from 1989 to ’91. Later in ’91, they went to Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, where they created ads for Nintendo and Kellogg’s.
After a ’94-’95 stint at DDB Chicago, highlighted by spot projects for the Chicago Film Festival and Wheaties Honey Gold cereal, Fietsam and Ciszek returned to Leo Burnett. During this second go-round (’96-’99), they developed work for True Value, Dewar’s Finest Scotch Whiskey, Living.com and Coca-Cola Japan. While at Leo Burnett, the pair worked with creative director Mark Figliulo, who is now managing partner/chief creative officer Y&R Chicago. When Figliulo joined Y&R in ’00, he asked Fietsam and Ciszek to move over to Y&R.
"We’ve moved around a lot," says Fietsam. "We try to work in the most creative pockets around town." Since joining Y&R, he and Ciszek have also worked on ads for Project Surefire, an initiative of the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s office to convey the now-stricter sentencing for illegal gun crimes. The spots—"Yard," "Cellmate" and "Friends"—were directed by Kevin Smith of Backyard Productions, Venice, Calif. Fietsam relates that he, Ciszek and Lee Goldberg, senior broadcast producer at Y&R, went with Smith to a federal prison in Utah and shot a lot of footage based upon some loose scripts. Other Y&R credits include ads for the Anti-Cruelty Society, the Redmoon Theater and Cyclogical Seat posts, a product for bicycles.
The pair regards its recent work for Sears as a definite highlight. "Sears is such an icon for Chicago and for the Chicago ad community that we really wanted to deliver the goods creatively," states Fietsam—Sears is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Ill. "We’re extremely happy with the creative for this campaign. I feel it’s very accessible, likable and appeals to real people. But besides that, the advertising is strategically working for them. It’s selling their goods."
