Shopping online is all about convenience. Returning or exchanging online purchases is not—or at least it wasn’t, until now. In "Robot," which was created by Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), New York, and directed by Mark Dippé of San Francisco-based Pandemonium, the United States Postal Service (USPS) introduces electronic merchandise return. E-tailers who subscribe to the service allow their customers to print out their own return shipping labels online. The :30 broke Feb. 21.
"Robot," which was shot on color stock and then color corrected in post to appear black and white, is set inside a contemporary home-office. It opens on a shot of a package sitting on a coffee table. A woman walks past the table while talking on the phone. "Oh, he already has Zogatron," she says. "I’ll exchange it." Cut to a shot inside the box, where the toy robot’s eyes light up, indicating that he’s heard her. He then ejects himself from the box with his expanding legs and lands feet first on the coffee table.
Taking in his surroundings, Zogatron spies a computer nearby. The voiceover explains that with USPS’ electronic merchandise return service, customers can easily download return shipping labels from an E-tailer’s Web site. Meanwhile, Zogatron makes his way to the computer by leaps and bounds, à la Tarzan. He swings from a lamp’s on-off string to a wall-mounted rack, then lands on the desk. Once he reaches the computer, he clicks the mouse, prints a label, tears it out of the printer and heads back to his box. After affixing the label, he jumps back inside, closing the top with his expandable arms. The USPS’ red, white and blue Eagle logo appears on screen, accompanied by the refrain from Steve Miller’s "Fly Like an Eagle." The tag: "What’s Your e-Priority?"
The service is a big deal for the USPS, according to FCB senior VP/creative director Tom Rost: "[USPS is] not always the first to have something, but they do here." Moreover, he said, "One of the biggest problems with online purchases is returns. People are put off by what a pain in the ass it is. The barrier to buying something goes down [with this service]."
FCB copywriter Ian Caplan said that the goal was to "convey how simple [the service] was," and at the same time "have it grounded in reality." While it’s unlikely that online purchases will actually return themselves, as the spot suggests, the message rings true in part because of Zogatron. "A robot could do it," said Rost. "It would be pretty dopey to have a shoe returning itself."
The agency team was sold on Dippé after seeing the director’s Honda ad—also entitled "Robot"—via Rubin Postaer and Associates, Santa Monica. The style of the two spots is decidedly different. Honda’s robot is giant and the ad’s aura is dark and oppressive, whereas the 10-inch Zogatron is representative of a child’s action figure from a Toy Story-like adventure. But, Caplan said, "We didn’t know if we should do CG or live action. Everyone had a different opinion. [Mark’s] proposition was to do both. After we saw the [Honda] spot, it didn’t look like CG to any of us, so that was a real clincher. [We also] thought that Mark had a really good sense of being able to direct people as well as effects."
Dippé and Pandemonium executive producer Clint Goldman were grateful to have had the Honda experience, because USPS’ four-and-a-half-week production schedule was tight. Partly for that reason, they reassembled the Honda production team for USPS, including San Francisco-based Mark Nonnenmacher, who designed the robot, and San Francisco-based Western Images, which created the CG sequences. "We didn’t have a lot of time," Goldman said. "But we thought it was such a clever idea that we went for it."
Dippé spent a day or two storyboarding and conceptualizing with the agency "to make sure this little robot could have a gigantic adventure." He also worked with Nonnenmacher to create a robot that had a "heavy, mechanical feel."
After the robot design was approved, M5 Industries, San Francisco, began building a scale model, as well as a separate head and torso that could be puppeteered. Cinematographer Barry Markowitz (All the Pretty Horses) DP’d the one-day live action shoot at Silvercup Studios, Long Island City, N.Y. Earlier in their careers, when Dippé and Goldman were with Industrial Light + Magic Commercial Productions, Los Angeles and San Rafael, Calif., they had collaborated with Markowitz. Said Dippé of the DP: "He’s a fantastic, creative guy. He has ideas and says, ‘Let’s go.’ I love that attitude, because it’s all about finding a way."
About half the shots in the ad are CG, while the rest are live action. "The shots we could do practically, we did," Goldman said—such as Zogatron turning his head to look at the computer, Zogatron shooting out his arm, Zogatron clicking the mouse. Added Dippé: "I really focused on these little moves, jerks and stops that make it mechanical. It’s the little details that make the story worthwhile."
Meanwhile, over at Western Images, CG Zogatron was coming to life. Said Dippé, "We used CG on those things that show complete action—running, jumping or flying—because the performance is so free and rich." The Western team relied on photos of the real robot as it was being built; they didn’t actually get to see the real thing until after the live action shoot, which was a challenge according to Western producer/head of CGI Matthew Fassberg. "Usually when you’re trying to integrate a practical with CG, you make one and then make the other match it," he said. "Here, both were being built at the same time. Although, having it in black-and-white made that a bit easier."
Also challenging, said Fassberg, was giving Zogatron a touch of humanity. "It’s really a challenge in five shots and thirty seconds to give a toy a little bit of personality. All the little moments where it does a little something—like it swipes the paper [from the printer]— brings it to life."
Originally, the plan was to shoot on black-and-white film, but none of the New York labs were able to process it overnight, so the team opted to shoot in color and then color correct in telecine. The black-and-white mandate stemmed from the original USPS "What’s Your e-Priority?" campaign, which broke last August. Rost explained, "We started that because we wanted a more techy, cool, hip look, and it was so successful and identifiable that we decided to migrate it into everything that we were doing."
Dippé thought it was a great idea. "Advertising has a certain difficulty. Obviously, [I’m] concerned about giving the client a piece that tells a message. [But] you want to find a way to do that in a novel manner, in a way that sets it apart. Even though ["Robot" is] a realistic spot, we have a little heavier contrast, and that creates a photographic style that’s unusual. There are always risks you take in that process, but the group was totally supportive, and in the end I think it shows."
Also noteworthy is the ad’s lack of an audio track. "I don’t know how it all came down," Dippé said, "but everyone loved the concept. It makes it much more cinematic, like a tiny movie of the robot who returned himself." The fact that the ad tells the story from the point of view of the merchandise also appealed to the director. "[Zogatron] is a great little character," he added. "I think [USPS] should sell him along with the bubble wrap."
