By Robert Goldrich

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif. --

As this week’s lead story tracks the blurred, if not at times outright erased lines between advertising and entertainment, appropriately John Leverence, senior VP, awards for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS), sees a parallel between two of this year’s primetime Emmy-nominated commercials and lead characters in the NBC hit series 30 Rock.
    Leverence, who annually offers SHOOT an entertainment industry perspective on the commercials in the running for the Emmy, observed that the parallel goes beyond the fact that 30 Rock stars Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey are in the nominated Hulu spot “Alec in Huluwood” and AmEx’s “Airport Lounge,” respectively.
    Indeed, said Leverence, Baldwin’s 30 Rock character Jack Donaghy–the portrayal of which earned the actor an Emmy last year and has him nominated once again this time around–and Fey’s series character Liz Lemon, for which she received Emmy Awards in 2007 and ’08, and another nomination this year, are both evident in the Hulu and AmEx commercials.
    “You have poor hapless Tina Fey in her persona as Liz Lemon talking to Martin Scorsese in the AmEx ad, thinking he is about to offer her a choice movie role but instead is trying to get her to buy a timeshare in a condo,” said Leverence.
    And Baldwin in the Hulu spot (directed by Peter Berg of Pony Show Entertainment, Los Angeles, for Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami and Boulder, Colo.), continued Leverence, is “not only a sleazy salesman but an alien looking to take over the world by turning people’s minds to mush. For those of us who watch 30 Rock, the salesman and other worldly alien apply to the Jack Donaghy character who has such a tentative grasp on reality.”
    Leverence is also struck by a pattern reflected, for example, in “Airport Lounge” and Amex’s “Animals,” which won the Emmy in ’07–both directed by Bryan Buckley of bicoastal/international Hungry Man for Ogilvy & Mather, New York–in which “you have an ordinary everyday background and a very extraordinary foreground. You have an airport lounge in which it’s not the Martin Scorsese you think it is. Instead it’s a ‘con man” Martin and a Liz Lemon/Tina Fey in the foreground, against the mundane backdrop of an airport. Similarly in ‘Animals,’ Ellen DeGeneres is in her talk show office but the varied wildlife animals she has on staff represent an extraordinary foreground.”
   
Continuing themes    There’s also a track record exemplified in Coca-Cola’s “Heist,” an ’09 Emmy nominee out of Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Ore.  “It’s reminiscent of Coke’s ‘Happiness Factory’ [out of Wieden, Amsterdam] which was nominated a couple of years ago and is one of the best commercials I have ever seen, wonderfully and imaginatively done,” related Leverence. “Wieden has given us another wonderfully clever fantasy with ‘Heist,” a midsummer night’s dream only it’s the afternoon in which insects and plant life are the fairies who act with assembly line precision to move a bottle of Coke through a series of Rube Goldberg steps, and then open the bottle to refresh the world they’re in.” The parallels between these two Coke spots (both directed by Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick of Psyop, N..Y.) reflect creative that is consistent and true to the brand, the new slogan being “Open Happiness.”
    Leverence also sees a Wieden creative lineage between Nike’s ’09 Emmy nominee “Bottled Courage” (directed by Ralf Schmerberg of bicoastal/international @radical.media), and the brand’s spot of seven years ago, “Move” (helmed by Jake Scott of RSA Films, bicoastal and London), which won the ’02 Emmy Award.
    “There’s the same kind of rapidly cut sports scenes and even non-sports scenes that are intellectually satisfying to the viewer, putting forward in the most concrete terms the sense of movement and now the sense of courage,” said Leverence.
    Wieden scored a third nomination this year for CareerBuilder.com’s “Tips” (directed by Tom Kuntz of bicoastal/international MJZ), which Leverence described as a departure from the norm.
    “Usually the Emmy voters,” said Leverence, “like to see the arc of a narrative, from a beginning to a middle to an ending. ‘Tips’ had this but with a bunch of hiccups with the repetitive nature of the story, going over and over again–like ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’–the ‘tips’ that it’s time to look for a new job. The repetitiveness works not only in terms of the comedy but also the god awful repetitiveness you have to endure in job hell, experiencing the same people and horrors day after day.”
    Getting back to shared themes with counterpart Emmy-recognized work from past years, Leverence cited this year’s two nominated commercials from DDB Chicago: Budweiser’s “Clydesdale Circus” and Bud Light’s “Magazine Buyer.”
    “‘Circus’ reminds me of ‘American Dream’–nominated in 2006–in which a little horse wants to grow up to be a big Clydesdale and pull the Anheuser-Busch wagon,” recalled Leverence. ‘Circus’ also centers on a Clydesdale’s dream–in this case a romantic dream as he pursues a filly whose owner tries to separate the two horses, taking the filly far away to perform on the road with a circus. Both spots have the classic story arc of Americana–at least the partial arc in which the first act sets up the situation and the obstacles in the way, and the second act is fulfillment, realizing the dream. Gatsby is going to get Daisy. We never see a tragic third act to determine whether he loses her or not later on in the story.”
    Both “Clydesdale Circus” and “American Dream” were directed and shot  by Joe Pytka of PYTKA in West Hollywood, Calif.
    Also with strong parallels are Bud Light’s “Magazine Buyer” (directed by Erich Joiner from bicoastal Tool of North America) and last year’s Bud Light Emmy winner, “Swear Jar.” (directed by David Shane, then of Hungry Man, now with bicoastal/international O Positive). Both are non-broadcast commercials which found life on the Internet. And both are marked by risque underground-style humor that feeds the viral dynamic.
    “You have two brands–Budweiser with its Americana, and Bud Light with its edgy comedy–and you see such a difference between the two corporate cultures. I don’t think the Bud Light people are on the same floor in the building as their counterparts at Budweiser,” laughed Leverence. “Based on the cultures and sensibilities, you’d never think the two brands are part of the same company.”
    Rounding out this year’s field of primetime Emmy-nominated commercials is Sprint Nextel’s “Wedding” from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco (directed by Jim Jenkins of O Positive).
    The spot depicts the perfectly planned and executed wedding, with a film crew at the matrimonial reins. “For Emmy voters, it’s like an inside joke in terms of how a film shoot unfolds, with careful planning and orchestration. You couldn’t have done a better job in terms of storyline in order to catch the attention of Emmy voters,” observed Leverence.
   
Expanded field
    Whereas there are normally five primetime commercial Emmy nominations each year, ’09 yielded eight nominees due to a five-way tie in the voters’ tally for fourth place.
    “This gave the awards committee a choice of going with the top three nominations or expanding the field to eight nominations,” said Leverence.
    The decision to be more inclusive made sense, according to Leverence. “I think going with eight was a very good idea given the quality of the work,” he assessed. To have five commercials end up with the same score shows what an extremely tight race this is as well as the intensity of the competition. There are razor thin margins between being in and not in. The bottom line is that with the quantity, we have great quality in this year’s nominated commercials.”

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