As much as you would probably like to avoid them, if you work in advertising, you use buzzwords.
Admit it.
Everyone is guilty of it, which makes “BS Detector,” a new spot for Adobe Marketing Cloud, especially funny if you work in this industry or any business for that matter in which there is simply way too much jargon being tossed around.
Created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, and directed by Tom Routson, who is represented by bicoastal/international Tool of North America, the spot finds a trio of digital marketing types struggling to answer a simple question: How does your company currently measure results in digital marketing?
Each subject is wearing a BS detector, a helmet covered with wires and lights, and every time they utter buzzwords like “key influencers,” “the bigger picture” and “halo effect,” they’re zapped with a jolt of electricity.
They get zapped a lot.
“BS Detector,” running in a :30 version as well as another clocking in at 1:08, ends with the tagline “Metrics, not myths” and marks the start of an ongoing campaign promoting Adobe Marketing Cloud, which provides businesses with a suite of tools that can be used to measure, analyze and optimize digital marketing efforts.
“We wanted to do something that would firmly say, ‘We’re in this category’ because everyone knows Adobe for their creative tools, but they almost don’t even think about what else we do,” explained Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ director of design and associate partner Keith Anderson, who was the creative director for this campaign.
Humorous direction As for the tone of the campaign, the agency thought a humorous approach would only strengthen the affinity people already have for the Adobe brand.
“We wanted to poke fun, and let people smile,” Anderson remarked, then noting that “there is a basic, honest truth to the idea that we all use these words.”
Routson, who earlier in his career served as an associate creative director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, was hired to direct “BS Detector” because the ad agency creatives were confident that he would make it funny and bring an artful visual style to the spot as well.
“The visual aspect of this was really important because Adobe is known for the visual things that get put out into the world,” Anderson said.
It was especially important to get the look of the BS detector helmet device, that is so prominently featured in the spot, just right.
There was a lot of conversation about how it should appear, with the creative team and the director trying to figure out whether it should have a homemade, patched-together out of scraps look or if it should instead be more sleek and modern.
Sci-fi and robot films were consulted, and what the agency and director went with was a device that looked like “it was created by a mad scientist who didn’t really think about the design,” Anderson said.
“We wanted something that looked real and random, like it might be one-of-a-kind and not manufactured,” Routson added. “It was loosely based on a few actual helmets from research labs, then our art department made it from scratch.”
The device wasn’t really capable of actually shocking any of the talent, of course. Routson simply used a “buzz” sound effect on set that he cued from an iPad in order to let the actors know when to react as though they were being shocked.
The director and cinematographer John Lindley shot “BS Detector” at the Los Angeles Times Building in downtown Los Angeles.
The goal was to create a setting that had the look of “a lab meets an office space,” Anderson said.
Routson had to shoot “BS Detector” as well as a second spot in just one day, but he wasn’t stressed about it. “I’m used to shooting two spots a day. It’s becoming the new normal,” Routson said. “I just plan heavily and hire feature DPs.”
Casting Prior to the shoot, Routson spent quite a bit of time working meticulously on the casting.
“We didn’t have a lot of time, but a lot of the time we did have was spent on casting,” Anderson said. “Tom stresses that casting is everything.”
Routson hired veteran character actor Michael Ensign, who has appeared in film such as Ghostbusters and Titanic, to play John, the no-nonsense man who oversees the testing process and looks like he has never smiled once in his life.
“I loved his dry delivery,” director Routson said.
The character of John didn’t have much of a presence in the initial scripts for “BS Detector,” but Ensign did some interesting improvising during the shoot with his facial expressions and gestures, and much of what he added to the performance made it into the final edit, according to Anderson.
Routson was glad to see Ensign’s contributions earn him additional screen time in the commercial, which was cut by Andrew Leggett of Arcade Edit in Los Angeles.
As for the trio of actors who had to spew out all of the buzzwords, one has to wonder if they needed a translator to help them understand what they were saying.
“I think the actors knew the buzzwords were funny,” Routson said, adding, “We all learned a few bullshit terms that day.”
