Down on the Farmcreativecampaigns"It's Babe meets

The Far Side," grins Eric Hirshberg, executive creative director of Deutsch, Los Angeles, describing the agency's debut Real California Cheese effort for the California Milk Advisory Board. The three-spot campaign, which began running in California last week, stars talking—and singing—bovines to illustrate the theme, "Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California." (McCann-Erickson continues to handle media duties onthe account.) Succeeding McCann-Erickson, San Francisco, on the $17 million account in May, Deutsch decided the best way to create an affinity for the state-branded product is to make people feel good about California itself. The agency illustrated the idea by taking viewers inside the world of the happy California Cheese cows."It's a whacked piece of logic," chuckles Hirshberg, "but it is the logic you want to buy into. It's got a nice spirit to it."Getting a believable performance out the cows was another thing. One of the challenges of the production, says the creative team, was finding a director who wouldn't just shoot cows standing in a field. The goal was to give the cows human characteristics during the live-action shoot to avoid relying entirely on animation. "A lot of directors shy away from talking animals because what is challenging for them is getting a performance out of an actor. Many directors mistakingly think it's the animator and voiceover talent that make it great," says Hirshberg. "We needed to get these guys to act with their facial expressions and body language," he adds.Director Chris Hooper got his performance—not only through the animation of 525 Studios' Michael Killen—but by prodding, prompting and cajoling the cows to get the nuances he needed. "We wanted the cows to come across as human," explains art director Karen Costello. "We wanted them to be funny."In one spot, a herd of cows sing "Sunshine Day," the tune made famous by The Partridge Family. As the commercial opens, a dozen cows mill around a pasture cheerily singing the song until their owner appears on the steps of his house. The cows quickly return to their traditional mooing. Costello and copywriter Chris Ribeiro compare the spot scenario to an office environment where employees pretend to be working when the boss suddenly appears. A second commercial, titled "Grandma—where you come from?" shows two young calves asking their grandmother questions about where she lived prior to moving to California. The old cow shudders to think of the snowy land where she grew up and remains silent as she experiences a flashback of a blizzard.The creators of the spot got a surprise during the Northern California shoot, however, when the old cow voluntarily shook her head as if she was shaking off a nightmare."We weren't sure what we were going to get from the cows because they're not known as the most intelligent animals," says Ribeiro. "But these cows were great. In fact, they were better to work with than some people I know."The commercials end with the familiar "Real California cheese" icon. It is pasted on a countryside billboard, along with the slogan, "Real California cheese. It's the cheese."A third commercial, featuring bulls, will air regionally during the Super Bowl.

Brand Marketing

Down on the Farmcreativecampaigns"It's Babe meets

David Lipin

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David Lipin