Creative Briefs

Close-up: EffectsKicking in the Kitchen Miniature soccer players, in a full-throttle game on a kitchen floor, wake up the woman upstairs. Discovering the tiny team, she screams, and they scurry up an extension cord and into a computer. The spot, via Black Rocket/Euro RSCG of San Francisco, promotes Yahoo!'s partnership with the 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan.Director Marcos Siega of Hungry Man, along with several creatives, looked at various kitchens in Hollywood homes before finding one to replicate—on a much larger scale. Then, the team was simply shot from above on the giant set. "I was concerned about it looking fake," says Siega, 32, who is known for his music videos and has a film deal pending. "I wanted to be able to move the camera so the playing looks real. So we created a set where if a person was six foot tall, they would look tiny."To make the players appear to kick and score in the same Hollywood home, Phoenix Editorial added in CGI effects based on photo stills from the original kitchen. "I was blown away at the end," Siega says. "We just had the right elements to shoot with, and it looked like they were playing on any kitchen floor." 'Twist' Tops D&AD NEW YORK—Levi's "Twist" from Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London, out maneuvered the competition at the British Design & Art Direction Awards in London last week, winning the lone gold pencil given in an advertising category.In addition to its gold and two silvers at D&AD, the spot—showcasing a carload of hipsters with unnaturally limber bodies—won a 2001 gold Lion at Cannes and silvers from this year's Clio and One Show awards. Frank Budgen of Gorgeous directed; The Mill handled special effects.Next among the top performers were two agencies that took home three silver awards each. Saatchi & Saatchi, London, won for print work touting Club 18-30 and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Nike's "Freestyle Football" and "Freestyle Skateboard" spots from Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam, took honors for incorporating sports sounds into a hip-hop beat.Two London agencies won two silvers each. Lowe took one for Reebok's people-devouring "Sofa" and another for Stella Artois' plague-treating "Doctor." TBWA\London was recognized for its animated PlayStation2 spot, "Wolfman."Other U.S. ad winners were Wieden in Portland, Ore., for the original "Freestyle"; TBWA\Chiat\Day, San Francisco, for a Fox Sports baseball campaign; and DDB Chicago for its Anheuser-Busch radio campaign touting the likes of "Mr. Professional Figure Skater." Each shop won one silver. 'Twist' Tops D&AD Fred Reboots Eraser Head Baby on Board Fred RebootsFred the IT Guy is back in four DWP//Bates Technology spots that broke last week for CDW, a tech products and services provider. The hapless character represents the Everyman of the information technology world who is pulled in a million directions by office workers with bizarre computer problems. "Fred, I think I fried the motherboard, and the fatherboard, too," says one staffer. Another asks, "System failure? Is that bad?" As in last year's spots, the office is seen from Fred's point of view, but this time director Jeff Gorman used a Steadicam to follow the tech troubleshooter from cubicle to cubicle. "Fred is our way of striking a chord of empathy in the IT department," says Ridge White, president of the Atlanta shop, whose own IT guy is named Fred. Last year's CDW spots were so well received that they prompted an outpouring of true tech tales, which were compiled in a book and sent to the company's best customers. Eraser HeadThe first of three new 15-second spots for Pilot Pen breaks Thursday during The Tonight Show and makes sly reference to the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal Jay Leno is so fond of mentioning. The spots, from The Kaplan Thaler Group, introduce the client's erasable gel-ink pen. "Shredding" shows a back-office type taking sheets from a stack of documents and furiously erasing portions of each. A voiceover asks, "What could one Fortune 500 company have done when they were forbidden to shred any more documents? Pilot introduces the first erasable gel-ink pen. Make no mistake." ... The New York shop also has a new spot in its long-running Aflac campaign. Yogi Berra describes the insurance plan to a fellow patron in a barbershop, saying, "And they give you cash, which is just as good as money." The Aflac duck, for once, is rendered speechless. Baby on BoardIn the latest installment of "Truth" from the American Legacy Foundation, the teen crusaders enlist help from dozens of baby dolls to spread their anti-tobacco message. In one of three spots breaking this week from Arnold, Boston, and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami, the young activists let loose a troop of crawling dolls on a city street. Each wears an orange T-shirt; a close-up of one reveals a 1996 quote from a tobacco executive: "How do infants avoid secondhand smoke? At some point, they begin to crawl." In another commercial, a woman abandons a crying baby, who turns out to be a doll holding a sign that reads, "Every year cigarettes leave about 12,000 kids motherless." In the third spot, the teens go into a mailing center to ask if it's possible to mail a package containing a "cyanide- and arsenic-spreading mech anism." When the proposal is deemed illegal, they reveal that the box is full of cigarettes.

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