Wave of surprise
Effects-laden Cabot ad gets its creator hooked on Cape Town
Euro RSCG/Chicago Chief Creative Officer Steffan Postaer has taken a particular interest in the work his agency is doing for Cabot, a division of the Valspar Corp. that began making wood stains way back in 1877. Of all the work Euro RSCG has done for Cabot, Postaer appears to have become most obsessed with the new "Tidal Wave" spot that debuts today. As the title suggests, the execution does indeed feature a most impressive digitally generated tidal wave.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Postaer figured out he could shoot the new commercial more economically if he and his crew traveled to Cape Town, South Africa -- an exquisitely beautiful and exotic locale the Euro creative leader had apparently never visited in his many years traveling around the world to location shoots for commercials.
(John H. White/Sun-Times)
The Cape Town expedition became, in Postaer's mind anyway, a very big deal -- one that he wound up documenting in great detail in a blog he has been writing for a while called "Gods of Advertising."
In addition to all the excessively indulgent oohing and aahing about working in Cape Town, Postaer in his blog does provide a fair amount of information about what was involved in shooting "Tidal Wave." As the blog entries make clear, there's nothing simple about shooting a 30-second commercial -- especially one involving a lot of special-effects work in a country where Postaer wasn't used to working.
The finished "Tidal Wave" certainly is a more pleasing effort than most of the run-of-the-mill work that clogs up the airwaves nowadays. And the tidal wave premise dovetails nicely with the Cabot campaign's overarching theme line: "Cabot. Our performance is legendary." The new spot opens with images of a beach house spectacularly perched on the cliffs overlooking the ocean near Cape Town. All is quiet in the house, where we see a man preparing to leave to collect the mail. We do, however, get a shot of some goldfish in the living room that figure prominently in the commercial's clever denouement.
Then, as the man makes his way up the cliff to the mailbox, we are treated to images of a giant tidal wave rapidly approaching the beach house. Seemingly oblivious to what is happening around him, the man thumbs through his letters at the mailbox as the wave crashes into the house.
The man soon returns to find his wooden patio dripping wet, but otherwise undamaged -- a testament to the strength of Cabot stains. But aside from making the point about Cabot and its stains, the commercial includes an unexpected final humorous twist. The goldfish we had seen swimming around in the their bowl at the top of the spot now have been replaced by one nasty looking little fish who may very well have eaten the previous occupants after being washed ashore in the tidal wave.
So "Tidal Wave" gives us both big special effects and amusing little surprises in an advertising package that packs a fair amount of punch.
For a while now, the barriers have been falling. Thankfully, women no longer are expected to serve only as housewives in modern-day America. Though progress has been much too slow for some women (and for some men who believe women deserve a break in the workplace), many females are proving they can hold down jobs that once upon a time would have been exclusively filled by men.
A New York-based entity called Girls Inc. came into being to help transform the image of women in business by providing after-school programs for young girls that encourage them to consider careers in science, technology and math.
To help spread the word about its mission, Girls Inc. turned to Zig/Chicago to develop a poster ad campaign. Zig, with the help of New Zealand-based illustrator Sarah Beeston, came up with a two-poster approach to explaining what Girls Inc. is all about. One poster is filled with playful images of the kind of things typically of interest to a 12-year-old girl. The second poster is packed with drawings of things like a telescope and a microscope that would more likely captivate young males.
By splitting the images into two separate and distinct poster ads, Zip hopes to dramatize -- and emphasize -- the point that Girls Inc. can help girls expand their horizons at a young age in ways that will presumably give them a wider array of potentially interesting career options later in life.
Companies are always looking for ways to make the public appreciate what they do -- even if it's something as mundane as oil changes. Take Itasca-based Midas International, which today is launching a money-raising promotion in conjunction with the Make-A-Wish Foundation that is certain to burnish the Midas brand.
Through June 28, every time someone pulls into a Midas outlet and orders up a vehicle maintenance package, Midas intends to donate $5 to the Make-A-Wish organization, which grants wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses. The hope is that Midas will raise more than $400,000 for Make-A-Wish, but the company has set a guaranteed minimum contribution of $350,000.
To promote its Make-A-Wish venture, Midas ordered a simple and endearing spot from its ad agency DDB/Chicago that features closeup black-and-white shots of young children -- slickly edited so the fast-paced montage of images perfectly meshes with the musical underscoring. DDB has pretty much mastered this type of heartwarming, kids-focused advertising formula. Over the years, the agency has done a lot of work in this vein for client McDonald's and the Ronald McDonald House Charities. But the public never tires of such work when it's connected to kids and a good cause.
