Maybe W.C. Fields was wrong about working with four-legged
thespians. When TBWA\Chiat\Day creative directors Margaret Keene
and Chris Adams shot Pedigree's "Crazy Pets" 2009 Super Bowl
commercial with a rhinoceros, an ostrich, a hog and a water
buffalo, the exotic animal actors performed like pros, no La Lohan.
(OK, they might have chewed on some scenery.)
The effort, which eschewed the idea of selling chow to focus on the
plight of pups available for adoption from shelters, is the first
Super Bowl spot in the brand's five-year relationship with the Los
Angeles ad agency.
TBWA\C\D's Keene shared her experiences:
So, how do you get Rusty the Rhino to run on command?
It's really, really difficult. Our Pedigree client ... John Anton
[director of brand marketing] was great. He knew we were going to
get whatever great animals we got and then we might have to build a
great animal into the script. So we scripted out a bunch of crazy
animals and we knew that when we talked to the production company
that those guys would only have certain animals available. We
originally had a whole scenario with a hippo, but we found out that
hippos are like the most dangerous animals on earth. Then they said
they had this great rhino ... The rhino trainer, you could do a
whole Animal Planet series on him. He had an ATV and he'd call him
just like a dog and he'd drive this ATV around the studio and the
rhino would follow him. He was really sweet.
Did he have to dangle treats or anything?
Nope. He was just trained like a dog. We kind of hoped he'd flip
out a little and crash into things, but he just followed him and we
said, "Man, he isn't going to break anything." But he was a big
guy. The first couple of times he'd stop in the middle of the
living room because he didn't want to hurt anything. He was trying
to be good and not bust through stuff.
Who was the most difficult on the shoot?
The ostrich was probably my favorite. The ostrich lady Arleigh
[Castle, the actress in the scene] is like 83, and she ran back and
forth around 50 times. At one point, the ostrich started getting
tired and she was pushing him in the behind -- she wasn't afraid at
all. I guess when your 83 you have no fear. She finally just pushed
him through the garden. Arleigh was our Clara Peller.
What kind of consumer research did you and Pedigree do to make
sure you were taking the right tone and message to capture the 2009
zeitgeist in a Super Bowl ad?
When we first began, the economy wasn't in the kind of trouble it
is now. The sentiment was just beginning. We had a bunch of spots
and we put them in front of people -- we showed them some pretty
serious adoption stuff, too. It was almost unanimous. People said,
"Listen, this is the only party I'm going to have all year --
please don't bum us out. We're just there to play and be
entertained and enjoy ourselves." It was something we already knew,
but just needed a little more intelligence on. People were pretty
emphatic about it: "Just make me laugh hysterically." And in
retrospect, I don't think we could have done better.
Are you getting good feedback?
Yes, it's been great. I think we were No. 7 in the USA Today
poll. My friends are e-mailing me that their kids liked it. The
clients are super stoked. Usually this time of year we are in
shelters shooting shelter dogs, listening to dogs wail. It was kind
of a treat to go another way for a change.
Did you work with storyboards? How close was the final work to
what you had envisioned?
We were pretty close. We went back and forth between three and four
vignettes, and man, we just squeezed everything in. We had a big
creative team, a lot of clients, but everybody was amazing. As you
work on these kinds of things, people can come out of the woodwork
sometimes and really change a spot. But on this one everyone was
down and everybody knew how important it was to stay funny and not
to stay focused on anything else really but pet adoption. That was
the one thing everybody wanted to make sure came out in the
end.
Have you gotten any complaints about hitting water buffalos in
the face with Frisbees?
Truth be told, it was a Nerf Frisbee -- you have that exclusively.
I was really hoping at some point the buffalo would actually catch
the Frisbee.
