Creative
Leverage
VIDEO
PRODUCTION
The 60-second TV spot kicks off with New Orleans Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees throwing the football around in an indoor training facility. It then quickly shifts to pro basketball player Dwyane Wade doing layups in a gym, followed by tennis great
Serena Williams knocking balls around on the court.
All three athletes are sharing their stories
about sweat, and how “training against the heat”
is a pretty serious situation. In continual need of
cooling solutions, Brees, Wade, and Williams all
concur that these days it’s Mission Hydroactive
Max to the rescue. “The Mission Max cooling
towel?” Wade asks. “It’s a game changer.”
Tasked with showing how the three world
champions “keep their cool when it’s all on the
line,” Drew Plotkin, partner and creative director of Los Angeles-based Launch DRTV, is pretty
proud of the Mission spot. Launch DRTV, which
also produced the Amazon Echo spots for the
campaign, says this is just one clear example
of how direct response marketing isn’t dying
or “going away” anytime soon. “In reality, the
industry has never been stronger,” Plotkin says,
“and is heading in a very upward and vertical
direction.”
For example, Plotkin asks, when have you
seen three world champion athletes — all of
whom are still in the midst of their careers —
come together to participate in a DR spot? “It’s
probably never been done before at this level,”
says Plotkin, who notes that the spot was backed
up by “very healthy” TV media and digital
spend. “All of the synergies really came together
well on this one.”
Short-Form Story Selling
Once the poster child for any advertiser looking for discounted media avails and the ability to
track sales to specific contacts in a very accountable manner, DR ads are emerging across an entirely new generation of advertisers that are using
them to tell stories, demonstrate products, and
go beyond the basic tenets of image advertising
to engage their audiences.
“For me, the challenge has always been being
able to tell a compelling story,” says Dena Levy,
producer/director at Two-D Productions in Cala-
basas, Calif. “We talk a lot about turning ‘story
telling’ into ‘story selling,’ and how we have to
meet the customer wherever he or she happens
to be at the time.”
From the mobile phone to the tablet to social
networking sites like Facebook, consumers are
engaging with a lot of different digital time-sucks
on a daily basis. To keep up with them (or, in
some cases, get out in front of them), producers
like Levy have to create highly personalized pro-
gramming that tells a story within a very short
amount of time.
“That time keeps getting smaller and smaller,” says Levy, who remembers a time when clients invested in half-hour infomercials and then
cut those shows down into two-minute spots,
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