Digital marketing specialist Turn will air its first-ever broadcast spot during the June 10th season finale of the AMC series “Mad Men” and the season finale of AMC’s “The Pitch” reality show. Conceived by San Francisco agency gyro and directed by Michael Lehmann of Dark Light Pictures, Hollywood, the ad is set in the offices of a Madison Avenue agency, circa 1962, where an impeccably groomed ad exec is about to begin a tryst with a shapely young woman from the secretarial pool. Then, another woman walks in.
Without giving too much away, the sense that this might be a preview for the show’s upcoming season is broken only when a bullet is fired and the scene shifts to super slow motion. A voice-over breaks in likening the “ten milliseconds” required for the bullet to traverse the room to the speed of Turn‘s digital advertising platform. “Turn targets all the right online audiences with deadly accuracy,” the voice-over explains.
“In digital marketing, great creative and great technology go hand-in-hand,” observes Paul Alfieri, Vice President, Global Marketing, Turn, Inc. “Turn is excited to work with the brilliant creative minds at Dark Light and gyro to develop a commercial for broadcast and online that perfectly accentuates our innovative marketing technology platform.”
The ad is meant to be an immediate profile-raiser for Turn by capitalizing on the marketing-heavy makeup of the “Mad Men” viewership. “There is a burning cigarette in this commercial, a couple makes love, a weapon is fired, none of those things happen in commercials, but they happen in this one,” says gyro executive creative director Steffan Postaer. “It’s a game changer.”
The ad not only marks a first for Turn, it’s also the first broadcast work for gyro, which was founded in 2009 as a “global ideas shop.” It made sense, then, for the agency to enlist the support of Dark Light Pictures, a veteran commercial production company with links to the film and television industries and a line-up of A-list directors. Dark Light provided the ideal director for the project, Michael Lehmann, whose credits include the television series "True Blood" and "Californication". It also shepherded the spot through each stage of production, visual effects and post production.
“It was a perfect situation for us,” said Dark Light Pictures executive producer Vince Arcaro. “gyro came to use with a fabulous idea; we matched them with the right director and also supplied the know-how and experience to carry it through to the end.”
Credits
Title: Decision
Client: Turn, Redwood City, Calif. Paul Alfieri, VP, Global Marketing; Keenan Rice Advertising & Interactive Strategy; Carol Weiss Miller, Director, Marketing Communications.
Agency: Gyro, San Francisco. Bob Ray, President; Steffan Postaer, Executive Creative Director; Jeff Shattuck, Creative Director; Ian Ashenbremer, Art Director; Eric Flynn and Steffan Postaer, Copywriters; Quynh Cline and Natalie Marmer, Account Executives; Robert Ray and AJ Herrera, Planners; Zak Garner, Media Director.
Production: Dark Light Pictures. Michael Lehmann, Director; Vincent Arcaro, Executive Producer; Sheila Flaherty, Head of Production; Sharon Groh, Producer.
Post: Brickyard, Mauro Camoroda, Editor.
About Turn
Turn delivers real-time insights that transform the way leading advertising agencies and marketers make decisions. Our cloud applications and Internet-scale architecture work together to provide a complete picture of customers, execute cross-channel campaigns, and connect with a worldwide ecosystem of more than 100 partners. Turn is headquartered in Silicon Valley and provides its platform, products and services in North America, South America, and Europe. Company revenue has more than doubled every year of Turn‘s existence. For more information, visit turn.com or follow on Twitter @turnplatform.
About gyro
We create ideas that ignite business decisions in a numb world. gyro is an Advertising Age Top 50 global agency deploying a 600-employee team of creative professionals in 17 offices in nine countries throughout the world. Globally gyro works with Abbott, Audi, FedEx, HP, John Deere, L’Oreal, USG and Virgin Atlantic. www.gyro.com
About Dark Light Pictures
Over the past 17 years Dark Light Pictures has established itself as a problem solving resource for television advertisers, motion picture marketing teams, and producers of feature films and television specials.
As a leading producer of television commercials Dark Light has created effective, imaginative advertising for some of the most influential advertisers in the country including The Coca Cola Company, Budweiser, Tylenol, Reebok, AT&T, UPS, Perrier, Boeing, Unilever, US Coast Guard, Honda, and The University of Southern California.
In the world of motion picture advertising, Dark Light has produced and filmed live action material for countless teaser trailer and motion poster campaigns including War of the Worlds, Mission Impossible III, The Other Guys, and Salt. For more information, call (323) 460-2077 or visit www.darklightpictures.com.
