Assigned the task of coming up with a new spot campaign for Altoids Chocolate Dipped Mints, Bob Winter and Reed Collins, copywriter and art director, respectively, at Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, had tins of the new candy on their desks as inspiration. Everyone around them took notice.
“People would literally walk by, and they’d see the new tins, and they’d stop and go, ‘Oh my God, are those the new chocolate-covered Altoids?’ ” Winter shared, noting, “We thought it was kind of funny and odd that they would ask that question before they would even ask how we were doing or anything like that.”
It was the enormous amount of fascination with these little tins that sparked an idea–a spot campaign in which tins of Altoids Chocolate Dipped Mints upstage the characters around them, no matter how odd or eccentric.
One of the spots, titled “Half-Deer Edward” and chosen as SHOOT’s Top Spot of the Week, finds a man named Edward, who just so happens to be half deer, sitting in front of a coffee shop drinking a latte and reading the paper when he notices a man and a woman standing before him. It appears that they are staring right at him. Edward is quite a sight with his antlers and all.
Then after a few rather awkward moments, Edward, clearly fed up with all the gawking, finally says, “Go ahead and ask.”
Motioning toward the tin of Altoids mints that is sitting on his table, the stranger finally blurts out the question he is dying to ask Edward: “Are those chocolate-dipped Altoids?”
Surprised, and perhaps relieved, that he isn’t the one being stared at, Edward uses a hoof to push the tin toward the awestruck couple so they can have a closer look.
Other spots in the campaign feature a man with a blowhole in the back of his head, a guy with banana hands and a dog with two backsides and no head. They are all bizarre and strangely fascinating but aren’t the object of fascination for gawking onlookers, instead taking a back seat to those curious new chocolate-covered Altoids.
Tim Godsall, who directed the campaign through Los Angeles-based Biscuit Filmworks, couldn’t help but be intrigued by the concept for the campaign when the scripts were presented to him.
Simple insanity
“There was a simple insanity to it that appealed to me when I read them,” Godsall said, “and I thought, if you could bring them to life in a way that ignores the kind of core insanity and treat it pretty seriously, it should be pretty funny.”
Indeed he was right–and he wasn’t alone in his assessment. There were a number of directors interested in tackling the Altoids assignment, but Godsall’s take on how the spots should be executed was in line with how Winter and Collins were thinking.
“He was good about downplaying it. That was super important,” Winter said. “They could have easily gone wacky and over the top, but they were wacky enough to begin with already.”
Before shooting “Half-Deer Edward” on the Universal Studios backlot in Universal City, Calif., Godsall and the agency worked with the artisans at Stan Winston Studio in Van Nuys, Calif. to create the deer antlers, ears and legs worn by actor Davey Johnson in the spot.
Careful consideration went into constructing the character. “There was a lot of debate over how long the arms should be and what he could do with them–whether he could pick something up or not,” Collins said.
It was decided that the hooves wouldn’t be very nimble and that the deer ears would flick and twitch.
Backstory
Aside from getting the physical aspects of Edward down, there was also the character’s inner life to construct. Godsall gave Johnson the half man, half deer’s backstory. “I always nerd out on the backstory,” Godsall confessed. “It’s something to talk to the actors about and get them to really inhabit the character.”
So what was the story with this half deer, half man?
“This was a deer with a lot of angst and unresolved issues,” Godsall quipped.
Johnson nailed the character “even in the way he sipped his latte,” Winter recalled with a laugh. “He leaned down and lapped it up, gently like a deer.”
Matthew Wood of The Whitehouse, Chicago, cut “Half-Deer Edward,” Godsall flying to the Windy City to join him in the editing room.
The editing process went smoothly, with the challenge in this particular commercial being creating dead space and awkwardness between the characters, according to Collins.
Looking back on the project, Winter and Reed, both new to the Altoids account, enjoyed working on it, but acknowledged that the experience was bittersweet.
“Somewhere in the middle of developing the campaign, the client made the decision to switch to another agency [Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco],” Winter said. “For awhile, we thought that might put this campaign in jeopardy, but they decided they really wanted to go through with it.”
Situations like this can be rather difficult, but Godsall said the split between client and agency didn’t affect the making of the spots at all. “It was all very pleasant,” Godsall reflected. “You’d be shocked to know they were actually parting ways if you didn’t know it.”
