You’ll be crying in your beer after watching “Country Video” (:60), a funny new Fruit of the Loom spot that features a memorable tune titled “You Can’t Over-love Your Underwear” and taps into just about every country music cliché that you could think of.
Created by The Richards Group, Dallas, and directed by Wayne Holloway of Uncle, Santa Monica, the commercial places the wacky Fruit Guys, who first appeared in ads for Fruit of the Loom back in 1975, into a music video spoof so lovingly crafted it earned a world premiere on the CMT (Country Music Television) and GAC (Great American Country) television networks.
Unlike most other commercials, “Country Video” started with the music, which it had to, of course. The Richards Group creative director/copywriter Ron Henderson actually penned the wonderfully sappy lyrics for “You Can’t Over-love Your Underwear.” While he is not a songwriter by trade, Henderson said the lyrics came fairly easily to him. “Word plays are big in country lyrics, so that part was easy for an ad guy,” shared Henderson, who created the spot with creative director/art director Dennis Walker.
The lyrics written, The Richards Group then turned to Scott and Roger Wojahn, brothers who serve as co-CEOs of Wojahn Bros. Music, Santa Monica, to compose the music for the song. Describing the pair as his “go-to guys,” Henderson related, “I had written some lyrics I liked, and they instantly knew that to make this thing work we had to make it sound like the real deal.”
“We said right from the beginning, ‘We don’t want to do this outside of Nashville,’ ” Roger Wojahn said. With the client’s and the agency’s blessing, the Wojahn Brothers hired the best studio musicians working in country music (including guys who have recorded with everyone from LeAnn Rhimes to Linda Ronstadt), an experienced singer (whose name could not be released for contractual reasons) and recorded “You Can’t Over-love Your Underwear” at the famed Ocean Way Nashville studio.
“With another set of lyrics, this song could have gone on the radio,” Roger Wojahn mused. (Actually, the song has gotten radio airplay from DJs at country music stations.)
GOOD OL’ BOY
While the music track was being produced, Holloway prepped for the shoot. Holloway had directed music videos for European and U.K. pop and rock acts earlier in this career, but the London-born director wasn’t familiar with the country music scene. So he immersed himself in it. “I watched a whole load of videos–and cried a lot,” Holloway quipped.
Seriously, though, Holloway said that he–as well as the agency–wanted to do the genre justice. “We all agreed that we didn’t want to send up country music videos. There was no point to that. It was funny enough that the characters in it were fruit,” Holloway said. “We didn’t need to embellish it some sort of sneering, We’re in advertising, you’re just country hick fools way. We wanted to make it true to the genre.”
With that edict firmly in mind, Holloway and DP Ramsey Nickell shot “Country Video” in one day on location at a ranch in Thousand Oaks, Calif., with The Fruit Guys portrayed by Jean-Paul Manoux (green grapes), Gene Steichen (leaves), Wayne Wilderson (purple grapes) and Rad Daly (apple).
“The shoot went very smoothly,” Henderson reported. “The only challenge was getting it all shot in one day. But, fortunately, Wayne, the creatives and the client were all on the same page from the start.”
Editor Jack Waldrip of Charlie Uniform Tango, Dallas, cut “Country Video.” “We involved him early in the process, and since had had done his share of music videos early in his career, he knew all the little music video clichés [we needed] for authenticity,” Henderson said, noting, “We also involved Wayne throughout the editing process, which definitely worked in our favor.”
One of the touches that makes this commercial truly seem like a music video is the credit title that comes up at the end, listing Wayne Holloway as director. Where did that idea come from? “We’d always planned on putting the credits up in the spot,” Henderson related, “but it was Wayne’s idea to put the director’s name in the credits. Go figure?”