Saatchi & Saatchi picked up a Mobius Award for its theme park pitch and a New York Festival nod for a psa for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It was the simplistic approach with which the spots conveyed their messages that set them apart.

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Following a brief about the magic of Disney and a trip to the Magic Kingdom itself, Saatchi & Saatchi creatives took some of that Floridian pixie dust, added Blink Pictures director Dale Heslip to the mix, and came out with ‘Shadows,’ and a Mobius nod.

Disney approached the agency with the idea for a spot which would visually relay the tag line ‘One place where we’re all the same inside,’ and would be a natural extension of the theme park, good branding and a lot of fun.

The first idea the agency’s creative team came up with – and the one they ultimately ran with, according to Saatchi art director Marc Craig – was to shoot families on the rides and around the park while their shadows on the ground took on the silhouettes of friendly favorites like Mickey, Donald and Goofy.

Aside from the obvious perks of the locale, Heslip says he jumped at the chance to visit the park for the first time with his two-year-old son, an experience which he says made him feel like a kid again himself.

‘Whether it’s a good song or script, and whether it’s a feature film or a commercial – it really comes down to whether or not the idea is good,’ says Heslip. ‘If it’s a good idea it can only get better, and in this case it was just a matter of coming up with an interesting way to shoot it so that it felt natural.’

What makes the spot a winner, according to Heslip, is its simplicity. Only the clearest communications stand out in a 30-second world, he says.

Another commercial out of Saatchi which earned recognition from the New York Festivals, a psa for Mothers Against Drunk Driving called ‘Dick’s Car,’ was directed by The Partners’ Film Company’s Raymond Bark.

Being a rather ambitious psa, one of the challenges of the spot was budget and the fact that the two-day shoot took the voluntary crew to a number of city and country locations.

The spot, a quick-cut collage of different facets of Dick’s life – ‘Dick’s Parents,’ ‘Dick’s Bar,’ ‘Dick’s Drinks’ – takes the expression ‘Don’t be a Dick,’ widely used by the target audience, and uses it as a positive to show how responsible Dick can be when it comes to drinking and driving as ‘Dick’s Car’ is a cab.

And while the message itself is not new, the non-preachy and visually enticing way in which it was approached is.

Roberto Wilson, Saatchi creative director, attributes the success of the spot to the simplicity of the overall message and the originality of the music video-style approach.

‘I don’t think just style or images or eye candy type of stuff is enough,’ says Wilson. ‘What works in this spot is the style and the overall look of the spot and message we are trying to convey. They work hand in hand to talk to the target audience.’

Bark says much of the spot’s impact comes from the fact that ‘Dick’s Car’ takes on the language of a beer commercial as opposed to many in the genre which tend to underscore the negative consequences of drinking too much.

‘That is good creative,’says Bark. It is either really simple and very clear or it has an ability to cover a wide range of things in unique and novel ways.’

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

– Burnett’s bait-and-switch gambit 31

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

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

– 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