The premise hardly sounds earth shattering on paper: a guy, a few years out of college and working his first job, is stuck in a rut until he starts drinking Corona Light.
But a new 30-second spot for Corona Light called “Stan” and created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, and directed by Mike Mills of The Directors Bureau, Los Angeles, is hypnotic and fun, telling the title character’s story through a skillful combination of still photographs, quick hits of video and an engaging original anthem–actually, more like a chant–written by the Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ team of copywriter David Roth and art director Grant Piper.
As the commercial begins, Stan isn’t leading the most exciting life. His routine mostly involves eating, working, going to the gym, watching TV, drinking one of those brown-bottled beers and sleeping. He has carved out quite a mundane rut for himself.
But when Stan makes the fateful decision to pick up a bottle of Corona Light, the good times roll with bro hugs, costume parties, girls, karaoke, digit swapping and all sorts of fun, reinforcing the spot’s tagline: “A refreshing change of beer.”
“We wanted to go up against your standard brown-bottle light beers like Bud Light and Miller Lite and to differentiate Corona Light from those brands,” according to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ associate creative director Nick Spahr
“So, strategically, what we did was position those beers as a default category, an unconscious choice. You’re just like, ‘Yeah, give me one of those.’ Asking for a Corona Light is an actual decision that you’re making, and it’s something quite different,” affirmed Spahr.
Select few
Mills, who accepts only two or three commercial assignments a year, chose “Stan” (as well as an upcoming spot in the campaign, which is titled “Mark”) because he was drawn to the idea of depicting a man’s entire life in just a mere 30 seconds.
“I immediately had ideas how to do it,” filmmaker Mills recalled. “And if your mind starts running, you know it’s a good connection.”
The director proposed the use of stills in “Stan” because he felt that they would suit the spot’s kinetic pace. There is a lot of story told in “Stan,” and the visuals needed to work in sync with the fast-paced Stan chant. “I timed it out, and I was like, okay, it would be really hard to read anything if you shot live action. You would just turn it into stills anyway,” Mills reasoned. “And I know from experience when you show a still, your mind reads it really, really fast, faster than if you showed a live action shot of somebody standing still.”
The creative team at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners shared Mills’ vision for the piece.
The director and cinematographer Kasper Tuxen shot “Stan” on location in Los Angeles, using both a Canon 7D and a Hasselblad.
“It was a very boring shoot in a way because it was very technical,” said Mills, who meticulously set up the actor’s position in every single frame.
It was as if the actor who played Stan, Kyle Cadman, was a Ken doll. Well, a shaggier Ken doll. The spot is designed to appeal to post-collegiate guys now sucked into the world of work, and Cadman was the right age, and he had the right look.
“He had that first job look–his hair was a little shaggier than normal,” Spahr said.
Beyond that, Cadman’s sympathetic face made him perfect for the role of Stan.
“We wanted him to be somebody you could root for,” Spahr explained. “The first two-thirds of this spot are really this kind of drudgery, but we didn’t want him to be so dejected that it was just miserable, or having such a bad time that you felt absolutely sorry for him.”
While we only see Stan caught in frozen moments, his bizarre dreams, which include a talking animatronic sheep and a pin-up girl sitting on a red exercise ball, appear in live action.
“Counterpoint is always good,” Mills said, explaining the decision to briefly break up the intense onslaught of stills. “Also, I realized there was a 15-frame lull, so I figured let’s go to live action just to keep it strange and keep you guessing.”
Cutting challenges
Editor Grant Surmi of Rock Paper Scissors, Los Angeles, cut “Stan.”
“The edit of that spot was as intense as the shoot,” Mills said. “The second half of the spot has all of these strange segues, and we created a lot of those in the edit, and it took a lot of playing around to create those visual puns and connections and keep the matching action going through the second half of the spot.”
Making music Composer Brian Hall and producer Ryan Mathew Wines of Marmoset Music in Portland, Ore., collaborated with aforementioned Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ art director Grant Piper, who earned a composer credit, on the spot music track. They managed to turn out an inspired composition that fit the creative bill.
“The client really wanted something that was listenable and kind of fun but still got across that chanty, primal thing. It was definitely difficult,” Spahr said.
“We went through several tries just trying to get it right,.” continued Spahr. “Grant used to be in a band, so he did a lot of work just by himself trying to figure it out and coming up with guide tracks for people to work from. What we ended up with was a really good version of something that he started on his own.”
