Suspend your disbelief for a moment and imagine that an entire metropolis abides by—and regularly plays—the game of tag, with nobody wanting to be "it." That’s essentially what happens in the latest :90 (yes, :90) Nike spot, out of Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore.
"Tag" opens on a busy city sidewalk. A young man, who looks about 20 years old, emerges from a subway staircase, holding a newspaper and a coffee. The camera follows him from behind as a hand is laid on his shoulder. He is now officially it. He turns around and, with a look of defeat, commences to be rid of his it-ness. He weighs his options and springs into action. To everyone he is a pariah, and people start to scatter like the parting of the Red Sea.
The boy spots a woman getting into her car and he rushes to tag her, but she frantically locks herself in before he can gain access. A quick glance around shows everyone shutting car doors and taking off. The boy runs to catch a man going through a revolving glass door, but finds himself on the wrong side of the glass. Frustrated, he continues his search, now finding the city virtually empty. But, wait a second! What’s that behind the garbage can in the plaza? An aerial shot reveals dozens of people lined up single file behind garbage cans and lampposts, so as not to be detected. Realizing that a whole slew of people are in the plaza, he runs at them at a full sprint and they scatter like roaches do when someone flicks on a light.
In a final act of desperation, the boy pursues a bunch of people down into the subway. A train is there to offer refuge to those being chased, and the boy only has time to thrust an arm between the closing train doors. He wriggles his hand around, trying to tag someone as people lean away from his lethal hand. He pulls his arm out, rubs it a bit, and looks up, noticing one lonely commuter on the platform. The boy turns to walk towards him. The innocent bystander looks confused as everyone on the train emphatically gestures to him to run; then he realizes what’s going on and starts to race off. As the boy lunges for him, the frame freezes and the supered word "tag" appears on the screen. The action abruptly recommences as the Nike logo and the word "Play" appear.
The "Initiative"
"Tag" is part of a three-spot campaign that W+K is calling "The Summer Play Initiative," promoting the theory that before sport, there was play. Each commercial advertises a particular product that Nike has rolled out for the season. In the case of "Tag," it’s the Air Max Fantaposite, a cross-trainer. Another spot, "Racing," features a guy on a bike with Nike’s PSA Play 120 digital MP3 player strapped to his shoulder. The biker turns on the music and tries to literally race a movement of Tchaikovsky. At press time, the third spot was being finished. "It’s this idea that play is the mother of all sport … It’s where we all start out as athletes," explained W+K copywriter Mike Byrne.
The creative team, which included art directors Monica Taylor and Andy Fackrell and copywriters Kash Sree and Byrne, set out for Toronto to shoot all three spots in the campaign with director Frank Budgen, who is handled in Europe by London-based Gorgeous Enterprises, and stateside by bicoastal Anonymous Content. Toronto-headquartered Steam provided production support for the shoot.
"The thing about Frank [Budgen] was, we knew he could make ‘Tag’ look big and real," said Taylor. The team was won over by a Lego spot that Budgen directed a few years ago titled "Box," in which a boy creates something so amazing with Legos that he becomes an international sensation. "That was taking a really simple idea and blowing it out … the biggest challenge with ‘Tag’ was keeping it believable, and Frank was able to bring a little reality to it," Byrne related.
In addition to the boy who plays the lead role in "Tag," the production company cast over 400 extras to play the panicked people on the busy streets of Toronto. Because of strict production laws in Canada, Budgen could only shoot in certain areas at certain times. For instance, some of the scenes shot in downtown Toronto could only be done on the weekends. The parts done in the subway had to be accomplished within the space of four hours. But these restrictions turned out to be the least of Budgen’s problems. "With all Frank’s meticulous planning, it all got shafted by the weather. We started booking up subways and roads to close down and couldn’t shoot anyway," recalled Sree.
The solution was to work on all three spots in the campaign simultaneously. "We’d set off in the morning shooting one spot and end up shooting another, so in some of the scenes in ‘Tag,’ we were just winging it a bit," Budgen recounted. But, as with most creative endeavors, sometimes it’s the happy accidents that make the outcome more interesting. Some of the choices made on the fly—lining the extras up behind the garbage can in the plaza; casting from off the street the man whom the boy chases on the subway—turned out to be some of the brighter moments in the commercial.
A playful, but basic, track created by bicoastal Elias Associates composer David Wittman helped to convey the simplicity of the idea behind "Tag." "It was important to the creatives to keep the elements pretty simple, so I programmed some drums, and there’s a bongo solo going on the whole time. I played the baseline on the cello and put in a few techno-type sounds that were more organic than your average techno beat," explained Wittman.
"Tag" was cut by editor Russell Icke of The Whitehouse, Santa Monica. The :90 has been broken down into :60 and :30 versions, all of which are airing. The third spot in the campaign is due to break later this summer.
