“There’s a wonderful irony to our Emmy nomination,” said creative director Tim Roper of Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Miami and Boulder, Colo., which earned the primetime commercial nom on the strength of Hulu’s “Alec In Huluwood” directed by Peter Berg of bicoastal Pony Show Entertainment. “We did this spot in which Alec Baldwin tells us that television is melting our brains–and the Television Academy is now honoring the commercial. You’ve got to love that.”
Also worthy of love is what the Emmy represents. “It’s a competition honoring entertainment,” observed Roper. “You have to entertain, which is a drumbeat I’ve been pounding in advertising for a long time. Sometimes that is taken to mean innovating in a lot of spaces, creating new media which is clearly important. But we need to innovate within existing traditional media. You can’t step off the pedal when it comes to existing media. The need to entertain and give viewers something of value is essential in television, and to gain recognition from the Academy means that you’ve done that…The entertainment quotient was even more imperative for us in this Hulu spot in that it debuted on the Super Bowl.”
Roper credited Baldwin for his performance. “We’re huge Alec fans here. I can quote you verbatim his lines in Glengarry Glen Ross. He was going to be the flagship dude for this [Hulu] campaign from the git-go. He can make words jump off the page, and he did a great job in selling the conspiracy theory concept of the campaign–extraterrestrial aliens are using television, and TV shows that can be accessed on computer via Hulu to turn human beings’ minds into mush, making our planet ripe for conquest.”
Baldwin of course is no stranger to the Emmy competition, having won last year for his portrayal of Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock and again nominated for that role this year. Also a past winner for her performance as 30 Rock character Liz Lemon in ’07 and ’08, and nominated once again in ’09 is Tina Fey, who starred with Martin Scorsese in another commercial which earned an Emmy nom earlier this month, AmEx’s “Airport Lounge,” directed by Bryan Buckley of bicoastal/international Hungry Man for Ogilvy & Mather, New York.
Ogilvy, AmEx and Hungry Man also have a winning pedigree, having earned the primetime commercial Emmy in 2007 for the Ellen DeGeneres-starring spot “Animals,” also directed by Buckley.
“Getting nominated and winning are both great feelings,” said Ogilvy N.Y. creative director Chris Mitton, who worked on both “Animals” and “Airport Lounge.” “To be honored by the television industry for being entertaining makes this competition special. The Emmy is an award people have heard of. You can win at Cannes and yet many people outside the business don’t know what a Lion is. The Emmy has more of a public status and stature. And it’s not a competition broken down into endless categories. Spots are picked for their comedy, their drama, their storytelling and then one is picked to win the Emmy.”
The humorous “Airport Lounge” centers on a chance meeting between Fey and Scorsese at the airport with the director offering the performer what he describes as a great opportunity. She naturally thinks it’s a movie role but may miss out on it because Scorsese heads to the exclusive for-members-only airport lounge to discuss the opportunity. Begging to get into the lounge doesn’t work for Fey but having an American Express card gives her access. Once ensconced in the lounge with Scorsese, he lays the opportunity of a lifetime on her–the chance to get a piece of a timeshare condo.
As for what made “Airport Lounge” successful, Mitton cited director Buckley and the genuine chemistry between Fey and Scorsese. “I don’t think they had met before so when Tina and Marty met on the set it helped the commercial which called for an accidental meeting between them at the airport. They used that in their performances which gave the spot a nice energy. They were excited to meet each other, respected each other’s work and as much as the commercial was scripted, there was a nice reality going on as well.”
“Wedding” bliss Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, scored an ’09 primetime spot Emmy nomination for Sprint Nextel’s “Wedding” directed by Jim Jenkins of bicoastal/international O Positive. The comedy spot depicts the perfectly planned wedding, with a film crew at the matrimonial reins.
Paul Stechschulte, group creative director at Goodby, likes life on the other side of the Emmy Awards. “Over my career, I did spots that ran on the Emmy telecast, even ads that appeared in the program they hand out on awards night. Now to have something up for an Emmy is like being part of the whole shebang so to speak. Plus it’s an award that everyone in your family knows about and has heard of.
Familiarity also helped “Wedding” succeed. “The idea of a film crew that makes magic happen and is buttoned down on all the details was nothing new to our crew and group of artists,” said Stechschulte. “Thus everyone felt and had a connection to the story and could bring different ideas to consider. The core of the idea was already there when we started shooting but there were so many nice touches added during the course of the shoot based on contributions from others on the job. There were certain zingers, one liners, the idea of having a cue card guy holding up an ‘I Do’ sign for the bride. What sticks in my mind was the handling of the stunt double groom–the replacement groom who in the script had to be used since the original groom had cold feet. On the day we were doing a run-through of the action, the idea came up of picking up the replacement groom as if he were a prop. We were almost treating him like a mannequin and that added a lot to the humor in the final spot.”
Stechschulte added that he and Goodby colleague, creative director Franklin Tipton, have been “very lucky. Through our time at Crispin and now here, we’ve worked with great clients and talent. Sprint has been a great client, and being able to work with directors like Jim [Jenkins] and the Farrelly Brothers [via production house Caviar on Sprint Nextel cinema spots], an Oscar-nominated [The Curious Case of Benjamin Button] editor like Kirk Baxter [of Rock Paper Scissors] has been a real treat.
Warning signs CareerBuilder.com’s “Tips,” which like “Alec in Huluwood” premiered during this year’s Super Bowl telecast, earned a primetime commercial Emmy nomination for its off-the-wall comedic rundown of the warning signs that it’s time to look for a new job. The spot was directed by Tom Kuntz of bicoastal/international MJZ for Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), Portland, Ore.
For Jason Bagley, a creative director on the job at W+K, the Emmy nom is reason to celebrate because “it’s the only award that my parents know about.” Another factor making the nomination “cool,” said Bagley, is that the Emmy is based on “pure entertainment value.”
The spot’s different vignettes, each representing a warning sign, had some inherent challenges for Bagley and the creative team. “For various legal and client reasons, we had to continually come up with new vignettes,” he related. “For whatever reason, one of them would fall by the wayside and it’s not easy just to plug another one in. You have a flow to the piece and the vignettes have to work together–plus we were working against the clock with a Super Bowl date on the horizon.”
Bagley credited members of the W+K account team, Maggie Entwistle and Tamera Geddes, with helping to sell a couple of the vignette scenarios to the client. “Ultimately it’s the client who took the creative risks and that should be commended,” said Bagley. “It ultimately paid off for them but it took a lot of work to get the spot in that state for air.”
For example, one of the warning signs was you’re ready for a new job if you find yourself at the workplace daydreaming of punching small animals. The vignette called for a koala bear to be punched, which understandably the client had reservations about. “At one point that was completely cut from the script. But then we put glasses on the panda [an animatronic creation from the famed Stan Winston studio] and had it talk with a British accent while drinking tea. That eased the client’s concerns and ultimately those touches made the spot funnier.”
W+K topped this year’s field with three nominated commercials, the other two being: Nike’s “Bottled Courage” celebrating the inspiring accomplishments of assorted athletes (directed by Ralf Schmerberg of bicoastal/international @radical.media); and Coca-Cola’s “Heist,” a charming animated spot in which wild plant life pursues a refreshing bottle of Coke (with Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick of bicoastal Psyop directing).
While the creatives on the Nike spot weren’t available at press time, SHOOT caught up with three on the W+K team for “Heist”–art directors James Moslander and Lee Jennings, and senior producer Matt Hunnicutt.
Jennings observed that the Emmy nomination reflects that “we’ve broken beyond advertising into entertainment. We’ve done something on television that people like and relate to.”
Moslander added, “Being an entertainment-based award versus an advertising award makes the Emmy special. The nomination recognizes that we’ve had some success in our ultimate goal which is to create something entertaining that becomes part of the culture at large.”
At press time Hunnicutt was days away from getting married. He quipped that for the wedding he was talked into buying a tuxedo, a purchase he’s glad about making since he can now wear the tux to the Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony in September.
In a more serious vein, Hunnicutt credited Psyop for its contributions to “Heist.” “We had a lot of success with them on previous jobs for Coca-Cola,” said Hunnicutt, “so it was a no-brainer for us to work with them again. They made the animation fun and clever, creating a feel-good platform which helped us introduce Coke’s new tagline, ‘Open Happiness.'”
Among the alluded to prior collaborations between W+K and Psyop on Coca-Cola was the lauded “Happiness Factory” (for W+K, Amsterdam), which earned an Emmy nomination in ’07.
Getting back to “Heist,” Jennings noted that the creative team was conscious of it being a Super Bowl commercial. So they cut against the grain, and intentionally made the spot start very quiet, with soft classical music, representing a departure from the in-your-face/rock/pop Super Bowl norm. “There was the temptation to put up a big expensive pop song,” Jennings recalled. “We even had been considering a song from The Beatles. But we went with orchestral and classical throughout, and that worked the best.”
Jennings continued that there were visual temptations which W+K also resisted. “With an animation piece, you can be tempted to be a little more cartoony. We tried hard to instead make it Planet Earth-like animation, very realistic, and I think that helped the spot strike a responsive chord.”
Hunnicutt affirmed that the brand itself makes their jobs easier. “You can naturally do feel-good work because you’re walking into a brand that people know, trust and love. So you can go to places like where ‘Heist’ takes you, and it just feels right.”
DDB duo
Rounding out this year’s field of eight Emmy-nominated commercials are two spots from DDB Chicago: Budweiser’s “Clydesdale Circus” directed by Joe Pytka of PYTKA; and Bud Light’s “Magazine Buyer” directed by Erich Joiner from bicoastal Tool of North America.
DDB creatives on these two projects were unavailable at press time.
“Clydesdale Circus” is yet another Super Bowl debutante. The commercial depicts a Clydesdale’s relentless courtship of a filly, following her all the way to the circus.
Meanwhile “Magazine Buyer” is a two-minute-plus risque viral piece in which a man decides to complement his purchase of a Bud Light six pack with a soft porn magazine, leading to varied forms of embarrassment for the gent not only inside the convenience store but also in a live TV newscast as a would-be robber bursts in and holds the “porn guy,” among others, hostage.
The significance of “Magazine Buyer” is that it marks the second consecutive year that a spot that didn’t run on television is in the running for the primetime commercial Emmy Award. Also for the second straight year, that spot is from DDB Chicago. Whether that ad will attain the hat trick and win the Emmy like its predecessor out of DDB–Bud Light’s Bud.tv entertainment web channel/viral spot “Swear Jar”–did in 2008, however, remains to be seen.
While normally there are five primetime spot Emmy nominees, the ’09 judging yielded eight nominations as five commercials tied for fourth place in the voting tally.
The winning commercial will be announced and honored during the Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 12, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. (The live televised Primetime Emmy Awards telecast is slated for the following evening from the Nokia Theatre in downtown L.A.)
