W+K Portland launched a new spot for P&G deodorant brand Secret entitled “The Question.”
Part of the agency’s “Stress Test” campaign for the brand, the question in question is, as you may have guessed, a proposal. But the spot flips the script on tradition, with a woman proposing to her initially perplexed boyfriend in a restaurant by giving him a fortune cookie whose fortune reads “Andy I want to ask you something.”
Telling him to “shut up” and stop worrying about some sort of horror movie scenario, she gets on one knee and present him with an engagement ring, before the ad ends with the text “Claire’s act of romance flips the script on a centuries-old tradition,” and the tagline “Stress tested for women.”
The implication, of course, is that Claire isn’t sweating bullets during the scene because she used Secret. (We can attest that proposing to someone is, indeed, the kind of situation that calls for a little extra deodorant.)
The spot made its debut in a thematically appropriate setting, running during The Bachelorette’s season premiere last night. “The Question” follows the agency’s previous “Stress Test” scenarios for the brand, which included asking for a raise and saying “I love you” for the first time via text and feels like an appropriate follow-up, with the scene unfolding in a relatively believable manner. Interestingly enough, the spot never shows Andy’s answer, keeping its focus squarely on the anxiety inherent in a marriage proposal.
It also marks the second ad in two weeks to feature a woman proposing to a man, following Ogilvy & Mather U.K.’s “Amazing Moments: Louisa & Rob” for Dove, which promoted that brand’s line of deodorant for women.
Credits:
Client: Procter & Gamble/Secret
Project: Secret Stress-Tested for Women
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Creative Directors: Justine Armour / Caio Lazzuri
Art Director: Johan Arlig
Copywriter: Justine Armour
Producer: Jessica Staples
Strategic Planning: Angela Jones
Media/Comms Planning: Stephanie Ehui
Account Team: Dana Borenstein / Alexina Shaber
Production Company: Somesuch/Anonymous Content
Director: Aoife McArdle
Executive Producer: SueEllen Clair / Eric Stern
Executive Producer Somesuch: Sally Campbell / Tim Nash
Producer: Christopher Gallagher
Director of Photography: Alexis Zabe
Editorial Company: Final Cut
Editor: Paul Zucker
Assistant Editor: Betty Jo Moore [Editor on ‘Three Dots’]
Exec Post Producer: Eric McCasline
Head of Production: Suzy Ramirez
Producer: Sarita White
VFX Company: MPC Los Angeles
Exec Producer: Elexis Stern
Shoot Supervisor: Ben Persons
Colourist: Mark Gethin
VFX Lead: Susanne Scharping
VFX: Sandra Ross / Vincent Blin / Warren Paleos
Designer: Kathleen Kirkman
Music Company: Marmoset
Composers: ‘Proposal’ by Will Canzoneri / ‘Raise’ by Jeffrey Brodsky / ‘Three Dots’ by Kerry Smith
Producer: Tim Shrout
Sound Design Company: Barking Owl
Sound Designer: Michael Anastasi
Exec Producer: Kelly Bayett
Mix Company: Lime Studios
Mixer: Sam Casas