Late last year, Mississauga, ON-based W.K. Buckley, a cough and cold remedy manufacturer known the world over for its folksy ‘It tastes awful. And it works.’ positioning, rolled out a series of ads that were notable for the bargain-basement feel of the production.

That was something of a feat for a brand that puts low cost as a key criterion on its creative briefs.

The spots utilize a similar approach to Buckley’s 14-year-old strategy of low-budget spots that traditionally present a stilted Frank Buckley espousing the benefits of his product lines. In this case, however, the commercials, shot in home-video style, feature Buckley’s employees reading and responding to customer letters.

The entire eight-spot package was shot for $110,000, an accomplishment of Olympian proportions when one considers that commercial productions typically shoot in the $150,000 range each. Since the campaign broke in November, Buckley’s hold on the market rose by over 20% to a 17 from a 14 share.

In an ad industry where the combination of rationalizing costs and generating results has become a medal sport, the Buckley’s campaign is like a dwarf winning the pole vault.

‘We have never had this sort of increase in our previous years. We associate a lot of the success to the creative,’ says David Rieger, Buckley’s VP of sales and marketing, who himself appears in one of the spots.

‘We’ve never had elaborate funds. We’ve always had to be tactical and lean in whatever we’ve done and we’re the number-one selling product with that strategy.’

One would think such successes would make creative teams across the country sit up and take note. With tight ad budgets and cash-strapped clients looking for savings wherever possible, the pressure is on to find inexpensive yet creative solutions to getting commercials done.

‘There’s definitely a bit more pressure,’ says Tim Turner, executive producer at Toronto/Vancouver-based Circle Productions. ‘The calls now start with, ‘We have no money…’ ‘

Of course, keeping costs in check is nothing new to the Canadian commercial production community.

Even in the best of times, industry veterans say, production costs are about as low as they can go. The result is that Canada’s commercial producers have become world-class in developing creative solutions that can keep costs down and still drive production value.

‘I just don’t think we have a large enough market to support a more robust and competitive cost structure,’ says Michael Wurstlin, partner at Garneau Wurstlin Philp Brand Engineering, the agency responsible for the Buckley’s creative.

Over his career, Wurstlin says production budgets have defied inflation. ‘We’re seeing that $150,000 still seems like the price of entry for a spot, which was the case 10 years ago. So that’s an odd phenomenon…you have this frozen-in-time quality to production budgets.’

On the creative side, there are all kinds of stylistic tricks that agencies employ to generate quality work at affordable prices.

The primary consideration is that whatever the approach, it has to reflect the brand position.

Not every brand can pull a Buckley’s. For most national brands such creative would simply look cheap not quirky.

Wurstlin says a low-budget look only works ‘as long as the brand supports that position.’

Still, there are tricks that can cut cost without making a spot look cheap.

The creative team at Vancouver-based agency Rethink understands this all too well. Rethink has built its reputation on taking cost-cutting measures and turning them into award-winning commercial spots. Working in a depressed Vancouver market with small clients and launching an agency as the national economy was slowing has forced Rethink to develop all kinds of innovative approaches.

Agency founder Chris Staples says the trick is to strip the creative down to make it as simple and as foolproof as possible.

‘The worst thing that you can do is plan commercials that require great actors, great big special effects, fancy sets, lots of locations or depend on really elaborate music or editing.’

An example of this is the agency’s award-winning Earl’s Restaurants spots. One spot features a dog licking a roast before a family sits down to dig in while another shows a young man taking his chances with some well-aged creamy salad dressing only to be wheeled away on a stretcher by paramedics. The spots offer Earl’s as the better alternative.

‘Many of our commercials have very few edits in them, oftentimes they are in one location, oftentimes there’s no dialogue, oftentimes they are shot outside so there is no need for lighting,’ Staples says.

But making up the difference certainly doesn’t stop with creative.

At Toronto’s Avion Films, director George Morita, too, is keenly aware of the need to keep costs in check. While there is little he can do if the creative calls for a Rocky Mountain panorama, Morita understands where he can make a difference in costs.

‘You know that if it can be done in the most expedient manner, there are cost savings all down the line. That comes with the equipment you choose, the crews you choose and how you go about shooting it.’

One trick Morita points to is his technique for covering car tires when shooting in a studio so when a car pulls away from in front of a green screen, it doesn’t mark the floor. This eliminates the need to paint the floor after every shot and have everyone sit around literally watching the paint dry.

Even when the brief calls for a Rockies panorama, there are savings a director like Morita can realize.

Such was the case in the mid-1990s when Morita was called upon to shoot a woman in her bathroom whose fresh-smelling bathrobe transports her to the great outdoors.

Rather than fly west to shoot the Rockies, Morita opted to employ some matte paintings of the range and insert the woman in post-production. ‘We had all these expectations of having to fly to Banff or the Rockies, but we ended up shooting this quite effectively at Rattlesnakepoint in Milton, Ontario,’ he says.

Circle’s Turner has employed similar techniques.