The concept of a car inspiring a passion for driving is not a particularly original idea—in fact, it’s as well traveled as a 1973 El Dorado. But a recent campaign for the newly redesigned Nissan Maxima out of TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, gives the idea a new twist. The new package, comprising the spots "Changed," "Orange," "Businesswoman" and "Runner/Poster," was directed by Tarsem of bicoastal/ international @radical.media.
"Changed" features the new Maxima zipping through deserted city streets, showing off its curves and contours. A voiceover at the end of the spot notes, "Nothing has changed. Everything has changed." The three subsequent spots in the package feature people overcome with a desire to drive a Maxima after a chance encounter with the car.
"Orange," for example, opens on a man carrying a bag of groceries down the street. An orange falls from the bag. As the man bends down to pick it up, he inadvertently rests his hand on a Maxima parked at the curb and is suddenly struck by the image of himself taking the car for a ride, tearing through a series of deserted city streets. When the driving sequence ends, we see the man back on the sidewalk, a stunned, bewildered look spreading across his face. As he struggles to understand what just happened, he remembers the orange he’d picked up. He looks down to his hand, but the piece of fruit is no more. In all the excitement, he has crushed it to a pulp.
"There was the basic position of this car arousing the desire to drive. When you see it, when you sit in it, it arouses that desire," says Chris Graves, who along with Kathy Hepinstall, served as creative director on the package. "From that basic idea, we moved to the idea of, ‘What if someone literally, just by touching or coming near the car, would get that same experience, that same passion for driving?’ "
And so a witty and ingenious storyline came to frame the spot’s more traditional driving sequence. "It was a great way to conceptually hook the viewer in without immediately giving it away as a car commercial," says Graves.
The two other spots in the series—"Businesswoman" and "Runner/Poster"—make similarly effective use of the desire premise. "Businesswoman" begins with a woman on a city street hurriedly trying to hail a cab. Like the character in "Orange," she accidentally touches a parked Maxima and gets a brief glimpse of what it’s like to be behind the wheel. Back on the sidewalk, she tentatively touches the car again, and finds herself in the car once more, driving through city streets. Again, she pulls her hand away, and we return to the sidewalk. When another person steals the cab she has just hailed, she looks on with indifference, and then turns her gaze back to the Maxima.
New Design
In "Runner/Poster"—a spot Graves singles out as a personal favorite—a man is preparing for a jog. He places his hand on a nearby Maxima, leaning against the car as he stretches. As in "Orange" and "Businesswoman," the driving sequence begins, this time carrying the viewer on a full-throttle ride though a beautiful, kaleidoscope-like country road. Surprised, the man pulls back from the car, exiting the sequence. Eyeing the Maxima warily, he turns and heads off on his run. Just down the path, he spies a poster of a beautiful woman plastered on a bus shelter. He stops and places his hand on the poster, clearly hoping to recreate his experience of a few moments before with the Maxima, but alas, nothing. He tosses a wistful glance in the direction of the car and continues on his way.
"I think the end of this spot sort of reinforces the whole notion of [the Maxima] being a powerful experience by the fact that the runner wants to recreate it with a poster of a beautiful woman," Graves says. "It’s not just a nice little funny moment at the end, it also reinforces the whole concept."
It’s a concept driven primarily by the Maxima’s recent redesign. "It’s a car that’s always been known for its performance," Graves notes, "but [Nissan’s] always been subtle about [the Maxima’s] exterior. And now, exterior-wise they’ve caught up to the performance aspects of the car. Now you get a visual exhilaration as well. That’s what we were trying to get across."
Key to conveying this message of exhilaration are the internal driving sequences. While the storylines framing the ads provide an undeniably clever hook for the viewer, sooner or later any commercial pushing a car on the basis of its performance has to show the product in action.
With this in mind, the team drafted director Tarsem of @radical. media to helm the ads. "We knew that the sequences of the driving footage were going to be important, but there’s only so many things you can do with that sort of thing," Graves says. "We needed someone with a sense of style, someone that could add visual style to the se-quence—and that’s what [Tarsem] excels at."
Imparting the footage with an appropriate measure of flair wasn’t the only challenge to these sequences, however. As Graves puts it, "We were trying to create an urban look and an urban feel—while at the same time concentrating on performance—and driving rapidly in urban areas is always sort of tricky." The agency and production team decided that Cape Town met the requirements of the job, and according to Graves, "it turned out to be a very good location."
