When Al Szajman, vp marketing at Vancouver’s summedia.com, approached Palmer Jarvis ddb to create a campaign for its flagship website, savingumoney.com, he knew it wouldn’t take long to judge the effectiveness of the spots.

‘Being an Internet brand, it’s really easy to track results,’ says Szajman. Since the spots began airing this spring, he says, ‘average daily unique visitors tripled, average daily total visitors more than doubled, and average daily hits tripled. We did in three weeks of tv, 80% of what we had done in our history previous to the tv launch, which is seven or eight months.’

The campaign is comprised of six 15-second spots, shot over two days on location in Vancouver through Circle Productions by u.s. director Tom Schiller, known for his signature neckties as well as his work.

The spots use visual gags followed by a coupon offer and originally came out of an idea for a print and outdoor campaign. An expanded ad budget allowed the agency to take its ‘already distilled’ idea and translate it to television.

The idea involves people who could really use the coupons available at savingumoney.com. For example, a toothless man is shown chomping, followed by a coupon offer for seven dollars off blenders. Or, a vibrating woman using a jackhammer and an offer for five dollars off sports bras. All six spots finish with the tagline: ‘savingumoney.com – coupons for just about anything.’

‘Before shooting each shot, I went to the client and said, ‘Do you like this?’ So I got them to say ‘yes’ before we shot the shot,’ Schiller explains. ‘It was a brand new innovation for my shooting. Canadians are so nice, I was able to make it work. That doesn’t work in America.’

It wasn’t just the Canadian location that allowed Schiller to innovate. Again, the dot-com aspect came into play.

‘I think dot-coms are more open to innovation,’ muses the director. ‘They haven’t quite defined themselves just yet. So you’re helping to define a look. Whereas if you come to a traditional [brand], you’re competing with the former image.’

Schiller, who is represented in the u.s. by Five Union Square Productions in New York City, laughs often when talking about the summedia.com campaign. For him, six spots in two days was no problem.

‘That’s easy for me. They were very controlled – one shot mostly, one setup. We were doing so well, I asked [Palmer Jarvis art director] Cosmo Campbell if he would enjoy directing a little segment of it. So he stepped in as a guest director and directed the woman weeping at the casket [spot].’

Did Campbell’s segment make the cut? ‘It came out terrible. The worst one!’ laughs Schiller.

The director has praise for agency creatives Campbell and writer Paul Little, along with dop Karethe Linnae, who Schiller says ‘got textural color on things that were unbelievably great.’ As for Circle top dog Chris Bowell, the director says, ‘He’s always been invisible and supportive at the same time, which I love.’

Schiller, who just returned from his honeymoon in Turkey, says he enjoyed his stint north of the border and would ‘love to do more ads in Canada. Any time.’

Apparently, the Canadian crew got a kick out of Schiller as well. At the dumpling lunch (served on the last day of shooting), the entire crew showed up in Salvation Army ties as a tribute to their director.

Trevor McConnell, vp and creative director at Palmer Jarvis Vancouver, is pleased with the campaign’s outcome.

‘It requires a great deal of craft to be able to put together a story that will actually pace well and give you enough time to breathe within 15 seconds,’ McConnell says.

Circle’s Sarah Duncan was the producer. Phillip Linzey was production manager. Agency producer was Sue Bell. Editing was handled at Cycle Media (Circle’s post division) by Louis Lyne and audio was completed at Wave Productions.

The savingumoney.com spots are currently airing across Canada as well as in Seattle and Australia. A reshoot of two of the spots is planned for airing in Hong Kong.