Circle Productions’ and Palmer Jarvis ddb’s humorous campaign of four spots for British Columbia insurance company icbc has caused quite a stir on the West Coast.

‘I don’t think anybody would have guessed how much impact these commercials would have had,’ says director Robert Turner, of Circle in Vancouver. ‘Everybody thought they were a good idea, there is no question, but I think the spots have performed above expectations as far as the public’s interest in them.’

Each spot was shot in a day at one of several Vancouver locations. ‘Walking’ and ‘Swimming’ were filmed in December, while ‘Biking’ and ‘Shopping’ were shot in March by Turner and dop Ron Williams.

The spots recognize the many idiosyncrasies of drivers. They poke fun at those who tailgate, drive recklessly, drive while talking on cell phones, and speed uncontrollably by taking the drivers out of the cars and having them demonstrate the same behavior while walking, swimming, shopping and biking.

Turner gives much of the credit for the campaign’s success to the Palmer Jarvis creative team of art director Mark Hesse, writer Heather Vincent and creative director Chris Staples. For the ‘Biking’ and ‘Shopping’ spots, Randy Stein came on board as writer.

‘The creative team just worked really hard on this and fought very long and hard about the physicality of the spot,’ says Turner. ‘They really worked out in their minds how the first two spots would come about. Especially in the `Walking’ spot, and I think that was the one that launched all of their thinking, because that was like their archetypal version of all of the spots.’

Much of the production had to be tested before filming could take place. The day before the filming of ‘Swimming,’ Turner took a small band of crew members out to the pool being used for the ad and plotted out some of the moves by filming a swimmer diving from lane to lane.

‘This was an unusual style of communicating, so we went in advance and did a lot of testing on videotape and cut the tests together and looked at how it worked and whether or not it made sense,’ says Turner.

Turner sites Star Wars mastermind George Lucas as an influence in this manner of thinking, as Lucas has been known to videotape before adding cg effects to see if they will line up properly, and as Turner puts it, to ‘make sure that you’re not going to run into any scary things. It took a lot of time and energy to do that, but it was worth it.’

According to the director, the only problem with creating a series of funny spots is the fact that he will not be able to ever see the humor in the ads the way that someone removed from the production will.

‘It is very clinical in terms of the way you actually put [a commercial] together – you never get a chance to really enjoy the spot,’ says Turner. ‘I’ve never had the pleasure of watching these commercials and just feeling what it’s like to respond to them apparently the way every one else has.’

He is very proud of the spots and feels fortunate to have worked on such a successful and widely known campaign.

‘You have to do a lot of commercials to actually find some that are that great,’ he says.

The editing was done by Deb Tregale of Coast Mountain. Sarah Duncan and Gillian Richards produced for Circle, while Nicolette Eus produced for Palmer Jarvis.