Sometimes the best way to cut through the clutter is to have no clutter at all. Such is the theory behind a very literal CNET.com spot entitled "Plant," created by Leagas Delaney, San Francisco, and directed by Traktor of bicoastal/international Partizan.
The :30 opens on a close shot of a rather large, goofy-looking man standing in an empty yellow room wearing a white T-shirt with the word "You" emblazoned across the chest. He looks straight ahead, as if expecting something to happen, when a taller man in a shirt bearing the CNET logo comes to stand next to him. The camera pans back as the CNET man takes "You" ‘s hand and leads him towards a large houseplant, behind which another man is lamely hiding. The CNET guy points to the hiding man, who comes out from behind the plant wearing a white T-shirt that reads "The Best Price." CNET then joins the hands of "You" and "The Best Price" and all face the camera, happy with the new union.
CNET is a Web site that helps consumers make decisions about purchasing products—a virtual Consumer Reports, if you will. The site rates products, provides reviews from other consumers and helps people find the lowest price. That’s why the spot shows one man helping two people find each other: It’s an artsy, mimed version of "consumer meets lowest price and falls in love."
Leagas Delaney creative director Harry Cocciolo knew that with the impending holiday season, the dot-com ad craze was positioned to reach a fever pitch. Initially, the agency intended to make fun of the whole dot-com advertising circus, but quickly realized that a spoof ad would get lost in the mix. Instead, it made something so basic that it’s downright quirky.
"[‘Plant’] is a conscious effort to be direct in offering people something simple," explained Cocciolo, whose goal was to plainly convey a message about the site. But alas, it’s always the simplest things that are the most complicated to create.
One of Cocciolo’s fears when embarking on the project was that the spot would talk down to the viewer. To combat that possibility, he brought in Traktor (in this case, directors Ulf Johansson and Mats Lindberg) to make the spot look as interesting as possible, while maintaining its simple integrity. Cocciolo thought that Traktor’s style, which borders on kitsch, was just different enough to bring the concept to life.
"Part of the criteria when looking for directors was to find someone who wasn’t typical, and for lack of a better term, American. We wanted someone who didn’t quite speak the language, had a different sensibility and was just a little off," related Leagas Delaney associate creative director/art director Roger Camp.
What gave "Plant" its curious edge was that it was shot with real people and not actors. Candidates for the spot were rounded up from bowling alleys, shopping malls, the Ethiopian section of Los Angeles and a Blue Angels air show in San Francisco. During the casting sessions, none of the "actors" was told what the spot was about, but instead was asked, among other ridiculous requests, to pretend they were running through a jungle and hunting. "What we were looking for were people who were not typical but definitely likeable," said Camp. "The more they looked like, ‘What are we doing?’, the more we knew we had found the right person."
According to Partizan executive producer Ole Sanders, Johansson and Lindberg managed to get the performance they wanted out of the people by instilling fear and confusion in them while on the set. Those who made the final cut were never given a script, not even on the day of the shoot. None of the characters were allowed to meet each other before the shoot and were kept in wardrobe until it was time for them to be released into the yellow room. "By shielding them from each other so that no one knew what was going on and optimizing the opportunity for confusion, we managed to get an effect," said Sanders.
Once the actors were in place, Traktor rolled two cameras and started shouting conflicting commands in English and in Swedish at the people in the room. For instance, the man crouching behind the plant was told to pretend he was hiding, then was told to come out from behind the plant—but when he did, they screamed at him to get back behind the plant because someone was coming after him. "Their performance was only good in the first couple of takes, because as soon as they got too comfortable or confident they were useless," explained Johansson. Consequently, Traktor said they shot more film on "Plant" than on any other job they’d ever worked.
"While ["Plant"] doesn’t look complicated, we intentionally planned all this stuff out, because simplicity can be really misused. You can make things simple and it becomes less than the sum of all its parts. What we did took as much work as if we had to rehearse real actors," related Sanders.
