Tel me about it

Testing, research and focus groups may be some of the criteria clients and agencies use to decide whether to go with a given tv campaign. But the acid test is, do people get drawn into the story and does it put the product in an attractive light?

Circle Productions’ Wade Ferley has nailed both objectives with panache in a new campaign he directed for agency Foster/Marks and Manitoba Tel. The pair of 60s and spin-off 30s produced from three days of on-location shooting in Winnipeg are delightful studies in how telephone-type products help entrepreneurs to do business.

The spots are strong because the viewer is intrigued by the way these up-and-coming people operate, the way they express their ideas and the way the edited footage explains what they do and what they think about what they do.

It’s stream-of-consciousness visuals. Take the spot about Digital Chameleon, for instance, a company which, among other things, is involved in designing the color scheme of comic books.

On the one hand, you have off-center interview clips with a creator describing how his childhood fantasies about meeting Zorro have in some ways come to pass. Juxtaposed with the clips of the artist and a business manager type are sunny shots of vividly-colored comic book pages, arcing pans, and strategically placed references as to how the phone – and such related products as the fax machine – helps take care of the practical side of the business. As the artist observes, thanks to the fax, ‘the artwork can be in two places at once.’

In the Mondetta spot, it’s a story of young men funneling their competitive spirit into the sportswear (especially sweatshirt) business. They say they work as they used to play, darned if they’re going to be beaten by the competition. But they’re smiling at the challenge, throwing in ‘here’s-me-on-the-phone-as-a-kid’ photos from childhood, playing ball hockey on the warehouse floor.

They’ve taken pride-in-flags as the design focus for their business and the director adds a few sequences, including one at the end with the Mondetta partners lined up saluting a flag, to point up the role of flags in the business.

Ferley’s added light flashes at edit points to accentuate this bright light story, and included street chatter about the importance of the fax, and synched it all to a jazz fusion, beat-driven sound track that is picture perfect.

But none of this does justice to the spots, their rock-video pacing, their sequences of visual and audio bits which combine to give an impression that there, in the midst of hurtling lives and business events, art, sales, clients and suppliers, is a tool integral to the success of it all, a phone. And you barely ever set eyes on one.

Credit to agency and client for taking this risky approach to advertising and to Ferley and the production team for pulling it off. Judy Samson is the creative director with Kathy Treloar as agency producer. Jim Fealy handled the free-ranging camera while Taylor Moore guided the charismatic edit. Gastown Post and Transfer on-lined the spots, while Schuan Tozer checked in with a dynamite sound track. Kelvin Fosberry produced for Circle with Chris Bowell as exec producer. ST

IBM’s traveling show

ibm brings its new service approach to the forefront in a commercial message featuring North America’s first computer classroom on wheels.

Directed by Jacques Fournier of Montreal’s La Fabrique d’Images, ‘Micro-Mobile’ puts the spotlight on ibm executive Jacques Coderre, a professional who shares his computer expertise with teachers and kids as they visit the traveling mobile.

Produced by Christiane Hamelin for agency Blouin Coulombe Dube Thompson, the 30-second spot highlights shared community values and a corporate executive shown enjoying himself as much as the children. The spot has an exciting, unrehearsed element, namely ‘kids just being kids.’

Fournier says he established a priority shot list for tonality and structural requirements, but to capture spontaneity and credibility – a live pick up of 10 kids banging about in the ibm mobile in front of a camera crew – the veteran director wisely predicted the final results could only be anticipated, although the hope in such circumstances is always to surpass the boards.

Sequences in this commercial include a three-quarter shot of a teacher working with the students, a gaggle of kids with arms up high eager to answer all questions, as well as an uplifting, telephoto close-up of bright, motivated children interacting with their computers.

Coderre’s v/o runs throughout the spot explaining how the mobile and ibm have contributed to new learning experiences in remote Quebec communities for more than four years.

The client’s message is rounded out with interior shots of an interesting computer display, replete with finger-pointing kids, hand-held interior mobile cuts showing children pouring into the mobile from the outside, shots of the mobile parked in a school yard, and takes of Coderre in a teaching setting, making a personal statement about ibm involvement.

Shot over two full days this winter, craft credits include art director Richard Marchand, dop David Franco, casting director Lucie Robitaille, Buzz post-production co-ordinator Michel Poisson and music composer Daniel Lussier.

bcdt producer is Anne-Marie Piran.

Buzz handled post and editing including big blue graphics and logos. Studio Marko did the sound edit, AstralTech handled lab duties and Supersuite did the 35mm film-to-tape transfer. LRB