Good ideas that get vetoed by one client can find life with another as evidenced by the Reebok “Run Easy” commercial, which finds people jogging and chatting. As the story goes, 180 Amsterdam pitched the idea for the spot to Uli Becker when he was head of marketing at adidas. While Becker was said to like the concept, other executives at adidas didn’t, and the spot didn’t get made for the client.
Fast forward: Ultimately, adidas bought Reebok, and Becker joined Reebok as head of marketing, bringing the idea for “Run Easy” with him. The creative team at Reebok’s agency, New York-based mcgarrybowen, was game to run with it.
Part of a larger overall “Run Easy”-themed campaign, the resulting :60 “Run Easy” spot is running globally, playing in movie theaters in Germany, Korea, India and Argentina and on TV in Poland, France, Italy, Korea, India and the United States.
“The campaign suggests that maybe we’ve been too hard on ourselves all these years, pushing our bodies to the limit. And to what end?” said mcgarrybowen Executive Creative Director/Art Director Warren Eakins, who worked on the project with mcgarrybowen Executive Creative Director/Copywriter Randy Van Kleeck. “What are we busting our asses for anyway? Maybe we should just take it easy and enjoy the ride.”
The “Run Easy” spot, directed by Frank Budgen of bicoastal/international Anonymous Content and London’s Gorgeous Enterprises, finds joggers–in groups of two or three–running and shooting the breeze. The people are talking about ordinary topics, but we only hear snippets of each conversation, and those exchanges run together, becoming part of a longer, absurdly funny conversation.
“That’s as far as I’d go on a first date,” a girl tells her running companion as they jog down a city street.
Cut to another conversation: “Unless I had–,” we hear an English woman telling someone else. Cut yet again to two other runners: “Big boobs,” a guy tells his jogging buddy.
The spot features a mix of everyday runners and professional athletes. The pros include NBA star Allen Iverson, NFL rookie of the year Vince Young, soccer sensation Theiry Henry, NFL All-Stars Chad Johnson and DeAngelo Hall, Olympic track gold medalist Carolina Kluft, tennis ace Nicole Vaidisova, cricket stars Mahendra Dhoni and Rahul Dravid, hurdler Aries Merritt and skateboarder Stevie Williams.
Why sprinkle amateur athletes into this pro lineup? “It was important to have the amateurs, including an older couple, in there to show that this truly is ‘run easy,’ that run easy really is for everybody,” Eakins noted.
Run with it
“Run Easy” was to be unscripted, Eakins shared, and many of the directors considered for the job agreed that was the right approach. Then, late in the process of director selection, Budgen expressed an interest in the project. But he offered a different take on how the spot should be done in that he wanted it to be scripted, according to Eakins.
Budgen pitched the concept of having everyone running along chatting about ordinary topics, then stringing those conversations together in the editing process in a way that made for an unexpected flow in the conversations.
“We thought that was such a brilliant way to bring some interest to the conversations,” Eakins said, crediting Budgen and Van Kleeck with working on the script together. “The tricky part was writing it so that it seemed natural and not like a set up.”
Cooperative weather
The spot was shot on location in London for three days, then in Los Angeles for another two. Eakins said the production lucked into some good weather. During scouting for locations and casting in London last January, it was snowing, but the snow stopped prior to the shoot days. Later, in L.A., the rain cleared up in time for the shoots. “People run in the rain, but because we’re trying to reach people that maybe don’t run, or don’t run a lot, we didn’t want weather to be an issue, so we were really fortunate,” Eakins said.
Jacques Jouffret served as DP on the spot.
To foster natural performances, Budgen didn’t give anyone the script ahead of time, Eakins said. How did the athletes fare when it came to delivering their lines convincingly? Eakins gave them high marks, singling out Iverson, who was paired with Young. “He [Young] is pretty quiet by nature. But the two of them had a nice chemistry,” Eakins said. “Allen loosened Vince up.”
Fans of Iverson will appreciate his line at the end of the spot about practicing–the basketball star has made fun of the idea of practicing for basketball. Did Iverson think it was funny? “Yeah, he did,” Eakins said, noting it was a great kicker to the spot.
While Iverson had specific lines written for him, Budgen switched things up with the rest of the talent, having multiple people read the same lines. “Frank used an Excel spreadsheet to keep everything straight,” Eakins said with a laugh.
Angus Wall and Brad Waskewich of Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles, edited the spot. Budgen spent a week working on the first cut. “I think this would be a good project–and I’m serious about this–to give to film students for editing because you could cut a lot of different spots out of it with completely different angles,” Eakins mused.
