Leo Burnett’s Kellogg’s Special K spots are the product of an unexpected juxtaposition of female and male dynamics, both in the spots themselves and in their production. Visa’s Monkey similarly plays with audience expectation. Both spots have been recognized as having a universal appeal and employ a simple message with a twist, delivered with a stylistically simple production approach.

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For the Kellogg’s spots, the roots of success lay in selling a great idea with advance creative legwork and conveying an effective message in the simplest way in production.

The Special K ‘Designer’ and ‘Resolution’ spots began with a print effort by client Kellogg’s that targeted a smaller, younger portion of its broad female target audience and grew into a tv campaign which humorously addresses the touchy subject of female body image.

Leo Burnett writer Lorraine Tao and art director Elspeth Lynn – the duo behind the winningly simple Fruit of the Loom clothesline campaign – scored again with a simple and original idea for the breakfast cereal, positioned in the past as a low-fat, diet-conscious product.

The original project was a series of double-page spread print ads talking to women 18-24. Tao says the creative intent was to break away with something that actually spoke to women rather than at them.

‘Body image is a very emotional subject for many women; we wanted to delve into that,’ she says.

The initial creative presentation of the ideas to the client was prefaced by a long setup presentation aimed at conveying to the largely male audience present exactly what the woman/body conundrum is made of.

Mass blubbering by the end of the show indicated the necessary level of empathy and understanding of the concept had been reached.

The strength of the reaction to, and the success of, the print execution led to a tv campaign aimed at women of all ages.

The spots take elements from the female body-image canon and mash them to comic effect, with ‘Designer’ featuring a bloated Lagerfeldian designer prancing the runway crammed into his latest skimpy creation and ‘Resolution’ featuring an assortment of macho men discussing their thighs and the like.

Tao cites the importance of a tuned-in client on the campaign, pointing to Kellogg’s Anne-Marie Halpin as a client who was able to run with details like not showing the product shot in the ad.

Directorial input was also key, says Tao, and while the team considered using a female director to capture the idea, the choice came down to who understood the concept best Imported Artists’ Richard D’Alessio.

D’Alessio says the strength of the idea required only the most simple, succinct execution, with added attention to casting and performance.

The French/English spots were shot in one day at the down-market Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto – D’Alessio’s idea.

‘Resolution’ was originally set in a New Year’s party scene. D’Alessio moved the location to a bar, a more realistic locus of male disclosure. He says the incorporation of elements of the male psyche in production actually made the female-centric message more effective.

‘The spot was meant to capture a very female perspective, but the irony is that in situations like that, working with men and women together can be beneficial,’ says D’Alessio. ‘I afforded insights into the male psyche that were completely relevant to getting the concept across. That’s what made it fun, everyone was in on it.’

Casting a wide range of masculine types, D’Alessio orchestrated one main shot framed according to the dimensions of the largest actor, a 6’4′ 220-pound weight lifter. The rest of the characters popped into and out of the unchanging frame, with their size and position seen in relation to the original frame. The technique allowed the director to keep a pared-down look to the spot while working in a visual comic device.

The spot was edited by Alex Eaton.

Visa ‘Monkey’

In the case of the Visa ‘Monkey’ spot, Leo Burnett creatives were shooting for a fundamental approach by incorporating the back-to-basics primal image of humankind’s evolutionary brethren.

The spot was the first installment of a campaign designed to position Visa as ‘all you need’ and was created by writer Patrick Doyle, art director Frank Lepre, with creative director Jeff Finkler. Andy Ames edited at Panic & Bob.

Doyle says the concept was a step away from Visa’s traditional hallmark of universal acceptance, which had already been well established, and toward a perception of Visa as an elemental part of daily life.

That concept got the team thinking along evolutionary lines, drawing inspiration from a news story at the time in which a zoo-bound female primate outperformed her human counterpart by famously retrieving, nurturing and returning to safety a young child who had been allowed to fall into the animals’ enclosure.

With that spark, the idea came together, with the sub-strategy that the spot tells a straightforward story that would have international appeal.

‘Visa is such an international brand,’ says Doyle. ‘We felt the advertising should reflect that.’

With that creative mandate, what was required in production was a director who would allow the story to play out sweetly with a tart twist at the end – that and a cooperative chimp.

Director David McNally of The Players Film Company says his main directorial function was understanding the idea and delivering the spot in a style that sucked the viewer into an ostensibly touching tale.

‘We wanted people to believe it was a kind of schmaltzy, animal/man poignant moment sort of thing,’ says McNally. ‘It was tough to resist the temptation to make the shots more dramatic or use different camera angles and the like, but the consensus was to tell the story in a warm, soft way – to lead people down the path where the story was leading them.’

In addition, of course, was the challenge of working with non-human actors. The shoot employed a u.s.-based chimp family and trainers, and McNally says while the primates were a treat, there were challenges in capturing the necessary subtle glances and advanced moves, like urging the spot’s chimp star Kirby to hold up the Visa card and smile maniacally at the same time for the payoff shot.

The ensuing shot, which has the rest of the chimps cut loose in noisy celebration, also took some finesse, with one of the trainers dressing up as a gorilla (a natural enemy of chimps) and mock-attacking the other trainer to inspire the carrying on (this attempt had to be cut short as the chimps, who each typically have the strength of about three men, got a little too worked up).

McNally says the spot has earned success internationally for the strength of the idea, a classic ‘bait and switch’ scenario which he says is a consistently winning approach, from a strategic and critical standpoint.

‘I don’t know if people recognize the power of the concept behind that spot, where you’re leading people to believe they’re watching one commercial and then there is a huge surprise at the end,’ says McNally. ‘I’d like to see more of that kind of creative.’

ALSO IN THIS REPORT

Winning isn’t everything. But it’s a really good thing.

Playback goes behind the boards on recent trophy-winning spots:

– BBDO puts the Doc Martens to truck touting, shows the doors to the pickup pitch, and subverts safe soup spots 29

– Y&R colors outside the emotional lines 30

– Marshall Fenn’s low-rollers gamble pays off 32

– PNMD bellies up to the international bar with milk boards 33

– Saatchi’s shadowplay and wordplay win for simplicity 35

– Gee Jeffery’s short-form meta-media features 37

The year is 2035, and executional enablers dig up a dangerous advertising artifact: Instinct. A cautionary tale by Randy Diplock 34