Starting from an early age, fathers teach their sons how to throw a ball. As the son matures through childhood and into adolescence, they bond while playing catch in the backyard. But then the child becomes an adult, and moves out on his own. Though the bond is still there, the father and son can no longer rush out to toss the ball around.
Young & Rubicam (Y&R), New York, offers the next best thing in the animated "Catch" for AT&T. The ad is part of a six-spot "Boundless" animation campaign that was directed/illustrated by Michael Dudok de Wit of Acme Filmworks, Hollywood.
The simple, yet beautifully animated spot is illustrated in pencil, almost entirely in blue and white. The ad opens on top of a hill with a father gently tossing a ball to his son, a toddler standing a few feet away. The toddler misses the ball and it rolls down a small hill. The tyke retrieves the ball and with two hands heaves it back up the hill. The father catches it and lobs it back down the hill where his son, now a boy, catches it with a baseball mitt. The boy hurls it back over to the other side of the hill. His father catches it and throws it back over the hill where his now teenage son catches. The son winds up and slings the ball with all his might and it soars in the air for miles and miles with no indication of coming back to earth. The father runs to try and catch up with the hurtling ball but slows when he gets to a small table with a phone on it. The father picks up the phone, presumably to call his son, who is now an adult and living across the country. The supered headline "AT&T Long Distance" appears on top of the screen, fades away and the heading "Stay Connected" appears. Fade up to white and the AT&T logo—again illustrated by Dudok de Wit—appears with the campaign slogan, "Boundless."
The creative team at Y&R included executive creative director Ross Sutherland, senior creative director/copywriter Kevin Fahey, creative director/art director Ann Lemon, executive music producer Peter Greco and producer Mary Beth Sheridan.
With the "Boundless" campaign and other recent packages produced for AT&T Corporate Customers, the agency is trying to reestablish the brand, which has been somewhat lost in recent years amid a flurry of new communication technologies, namely cell phones and email. The new campaign is not about low calling rates or quality services, but simply trying to remind people of the importance of staying connected with loved ones on a more personal level, while reinforcing AT&T’s position as the leading provider of long-distance telephone service.
"With all these other ways to connect out there, one of the best, a telephone call, has been somewhat neglected or under-appreciated for a few years," noted Fahey. "Email and wireless are good to touch base with people, but with a long distance call you can take your time, capture the nuances of someone’s voice and have a real conversation with them. So, we were trying to think of a way to dramatize that."
For years, Y&R has produced emotionally styled ads for AT&T, but until now most of those ads have been live-action spots. While the agency wished to continue with these types of ads, it also wanted to tap into the "Blue and White" campaign, which in the past year has been very successful for AT&T Corporate said Fahey. "Blue and White" spots feature metaphors using the AT&T logo itself as a metaphor for the new and different services the company is offering. While the campaign does convey information, it concentrates more on making the image of the logo stick in consumers’ minds.
"With this assignment we wanted to continue with that idea of the ‘Blue and White’ campaign so that it’s easily recognizable but without showing the logo on screen for the entire spot," explained Fahey. "We wanted to create the same feelings in people that the old AT&T advertising did, but do it by different means. That’s how we started thinking about doing animation. Plus with animation, people can somehow see themselves in that situation a lot easier because it a little more open-ended than if you have live-action with actors that some people may not identify with."
While searching for someone to do the animation for the campaign, the agency saw Dudok de Wit’s animated short, Father and Daughter, which won this year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. The short is the beautifully haunting story of physical and emotional separation as experienced by a young girl who bids her father farewell and watches him disappear across a lake in a rowboat. Set against the flat Dutch landscape and huge skies, the pen-and-ink-style animation follows the girl throughout her life as she keeps returning by bicycle to the spot where she last saw her father. The landscape changes with the seasons; the young girl grows older and has a family of her own, yet she continues her vigil. As an old woman she returns once more to the lake, which has retreated over time. Making her way through much of what once was lakebed, she discovers a derelict, half-buried rowboat and curls up inside it. Soon after, she is a young girl again, reunited with her father in a scene that is deliberately left open to the viewer’s own interpretation.
"We were struck immediately by Michael’s work," recalled Fahey. "Here is animation that, unlike ninety percent of the form, conveys emotional themes. Animation so often is just used for comedy, but for this we wanted something more meaningful. He has an incredible talent for light and shadow—things you usually don’t see in animation. We wanted a person that could really create a mood and an atmosphere and Michael could do that with just some relatively simple line drawings. We just wanted people to think about the meaning of long distance and not get distracted by bells and whistles. There’s something very beautiful and classic about the way Michael animates that was perfect for this project."
A veteran animator, Dudok de Wit was excited to have so much freedom and input on the project. The agency had seen his short film and asked him to do something in that creative spirit, only requesting that he incorporate the blue and white color scheme.
"I think because the agency had seen my film and wanted something similar; they were very respectful of my own tastes and personal opinions more than I’ve ever experienced in my career," noted Dudok de Wit. "As a result we worked really, really well together."
Dudok de Wit’s animation style, drawn entirely in pencil, maintains a very hand-made look with strong emphasis on line, light and shadow against a grainy background. Unlike most animation these days, the use of computers is minimal in this Dudok de Wit work, and is simply employed as a time saving measure rather than to make it look slick and polished.
"My film was quite monochromatic so it had a lot in common with what they wanted for these commercials," explained Dudok de Wit. "I really liked the agency’s desire to keep things quite simple and to have a minimalist approach to the storytelling. It’s risky because if you are too minimalist, it can be boring. But when it works, it works very, very well."
To complete the spot, the agency turned to David Horowitz of David Horowitz Music Associates, New York, to compose the original music. Like the concept and animation style, the agency wanted to keep the music relatively simple and unobtrusive. As there was never even a scratch track set to the spot, Horowitz was given the freedom to compose whatever he thought would fit the piece. The resulting music was a relatively basic, even-tempo song played solely on the piano that reflects the sense of warmth, journey and intimacy presented in the visuals.
"This type of animation was very small and intimate and we didn’t want to overwhelm it with a big track," noted Horowitz. "This wasn’t a Disney piece. It’s been a great collaboration working on these spots and just to be given the freedom to do just about whatever I wanted was great."
