Ogilvy & Mather’s new campaign for Time Warner Cable features three viral video ads that extend the TV campaign with longer form spots that provide the opportunity for “a little more fun,” according to Ogilvy’s group creative director Tommy Henvey. The spots were produced by Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles.
The fun revolves around the star of the spots, Mike O’Malley, a Los Angeles-based actor and comedian who generates laughs by playing with a stuffed monkey, a finger apparatus and a guitar while promoting Time Warner Cable benefits. O’Malley starts “Guitar” by saying he can’t write music or play a guitar, before singing an original song and jamming on the guitar, “Time Warner Cable doesn’t charge for HD, why would you want satellite TV?”
“We propped the house and wrote little bits and recorded them,” Henvey said of the shoot. “We found the monkey and wrote a script about a happy monkey and the finger was another bit.”
“Monkey,” “Finger” and “Guitar” are the titles of the spots, which run from 43 to 52 seconds, longer than the TV :30s. “It was great on the creative side, because you didn’t have to worry about cutting them to 30 seconds,” he said. “We said, should we cut them to :30, but you lose so much by cutting them so there’s no cuts in any of the spots.”
The agency shot seven TV :30s also starring O’Malley, which were “more involved, with other people in them,” Henvey said. “The web virals were different for the digital realm, not long-form TV spots.”
Clay Weiner, who directed the films for Biscuit Filmworks, said they were shot in four days in late March in Los Angeles with dual Panasonic HDX900 cameras that permitted a straight shoot. “In performance centric pieces I like not having to cut every :40 seconds, re-slate and reset,” he said.
The Monkey and Finger videos can be attributable to Weiner. “I brought a prop truck to set that was jam-packed with all these hysterical things. That insured we had a lot of funny to throw in the mix. I love improvisation, it’s part of my schooling, and of all of the spots we walked away with, the loosest ones worked best.”
The humorous viral videos present the cable TV product in a favorable light. “There’s a lot of competitive stuff on the air that is hard hitting and loses heart about why you care,” Henvey said. “These spots have style and humanity and a bit of fun. You get the message because O’Malley’s not talking to you, he’s telling you a story and it’s nice to see a happy monkey on his lap.”
The viral spots were posted on YouTube May 6 and the Timewarner.com home page May 9. They followed the TV spots, which went live April 18.
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