Sam Sniderman has one of the most famous faces in Canadian retail. As Toronto’s best-known record peddler, Sam ‘The Record Man’ Sniderman is known for his enduring and successful chain of record stores. The Sam’s chain has been in business for decades thanks in part to its ability to change with the times and still maintain the fun-loving image of its founder. This persona of the wacky Record Man will once again be gracing television screens, this time for a new initiative in the record business as Sam takes his store on-line.

The first Sam.com tv ad was created at Toronto’s Cuppa Coffee Animation with creative out of Riddoch Communications. The spot is part of a fully integrated campaign which also includes print, direct mail, on-line, transit and many other types of advertising. Riddoch creative director and writer Brad Riddoch (who teamed with art director Robin Uchida on the ad) says his firm is trying to be sure as many advertising venues as possible are explored in the large-scale campaign.

‘What we are really trying to accomplish strategically is to bring the humanity of Sam Sniderman to dot-coms,’ says Riddoch. ‘This is just one television spot which is part of an entire campaign.’

The television ad for Sam’s dot-com service is simple in concept but rather tricky in execution, say those at Cuppa Coffee. The spot depicts Sam’s entire head sporting a collection of different hairstyles, each reflecting how music has changed throughout the years, with the one constant being, of course, Sam.

‘It’s to show that Sam has been around and Sam knows his music,’ says the spot’s compositor and editor Chris Morris. Morris and the spot’s creative director on the Cuppa side, Dave Thomas (no relation apparently to the other famous advertising self-promoter) worked for about three weeks on the 30-second spot. According to Thomas, one of the major challenges was compiling the 21 different hairstyles used in the spot.

‘We referenced a lot of magazines and had people bring in their early ’80s rock albums so we could go through and change the hairstyles,’ says Thomas, adding that some quick thinking was required to portray some of the more obscure styles.

‘Some of the hairstyles we had to sort of adapt,’ he says. ‘On the Willie Nelson (hairstyle, sported by Sam early in the ad), the braids are actually a twelve-year-old girl’s braids. We couldn’t find an excellent reference of just (Nelson’s) braids hanging in front of him.’

Other styles used for the spot include Kiss’s Paul Stanley, The Beatles circa Hard Day’s Night, John Travolta from the Saturday Night Fever era, David Bowie circa Diamond Dogs, along with Grace Jones and, of course, The King. Some improvising had to be done before depicting rock icon Jimi Hendrix.

‘The Hendrix we actually faked as well,’ says Thomas. ‘We couldn’t find a clean Jimi Hendrix picture either so we scanned a piece of fabric and made a headband.’

Thomas says it took a lot of experimentation to get the look of the Sam.com spot just right.

‘We toyed around with the idea initially of having the graphics in the yellow field surrounding him,’ says Thomas. ‘We actually went about art-working up the hairstyles. We were thinking of doing like a water color treatment to one and half-tone treatments to others. We decided it was taking it too far and that the hair stands alone.’

To keep the ad interesting, Thomas and Morris used flips and multi-screens to add some spice to the spot, as opposed to a constant shot of Sam with his hair changing.

The music for the Sam.com spot was completed by Rick Sherman at Pirate Radio.