Office Maxed Out

While rumors about redundancies continue to circulate among the paper pushers at The Office's Dunder Mifflin Inc., Burger King's own weary office crew has already gotten its pink slips. Last year, spots in the "Have it your way" campaign starred wrapper-sniffing, whopper-copying cube dwellers, just before season two of the BBC's breakout show hit DVD and rumors began circulating that an American version of the work-life parody was in production. The Crispin Porter + Bogusky ads, which closely called on The Office's dreary Slough collective for inspiration (down to the cast's short-sleeved dress shirts and computer monitor complexions), were an inside joke just enough ahead of the hype to tap into Burger King's cool kids vibe. But now, when millions of Americans are tuning into like-minded TV shows and the myriad ads inspired by them, CP+B says it has no plans to produce more "Lunch Break" spots—which begs the question, has the fun of being in on the joke been spoiled? "So much stuff gets defined by cool because it's not quite mainstream," says Robert Thomson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture at Syracuse University. "When you're on top of the wheel as cool and hip—and that wheel is spinning very quickly these days—by the time it's defined as cool, it no longer has that niche appeal. Part of the fun is being in on the joke."Directed by Martin Granger, who first saw The Office while filming in London in November 2003, the Burger King ads referenced what was still a cult phenomenon. "We all looked at it and said that's exactly it, we want to play the little moments of life for the comedic value, and we all found comedy in two people staring at each other rather than pie in the face," Granger says.Only available to Americans who sought it out on DVD or on BBC America, the show appealed to viewers whose appetite for verité-style television comedy had been whet by HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Once the exclusive domain of mockumentaries like This Is Spinal Tap, both shows deliver an offbeat humor that has traded machine-gun banter and laugh tracks for social bumbling and long, awkward pauses."People are getting used to a slower pace than the typical sitcom," says Steve Dildarian, a copywriter who freelances at Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. "It's a more understated and a more British sense of humor. ... Maybe it took The Office to put it more in front of people."But, Burger King aired the last of its 23 original "Lunch Break" ads more than a month before NBC debuted its version of The Office, which heavily borrows from the British original and aims to attract a mainstream audience. CP+B hasn't commissioned a new office script in months, says associate creative director Rob Reilly. The ads managed to bring the brand a touch of relevancy to Burger King's core target, 18- to 35-year-old men. "That style of comedy seemed to work the best ... and we're the target market," he says. But, he adds, "Burger King is a great iconic brand that deserves fresh content all the time. For us to go back to the well ... I don't feel like we have to when we have a client who wants to keep pushing us creatively."Meanwhile, other advertisers are bringing the humor to an audience that is arguably even wider than that of NBC's new series. (The Office, which debuted to 11 million viewers in March, has seen its audience dwindle to about 5 million this month.)Sierra Mist, Federal Express and Sonic Drive-In restaurants have infused their own ads with rambling dialogue, mis-statements and low-key performances. Even smaller campaigns, such as tourist destination Colonial Williamsburg, Va., by Arnold in Washington, have incorporated the depressed environs of The Office. Sonic Drive-In gave its recurring duo, T.J. and Pete, a larger stage this year with a national cable buy. The campaign, which launched during the premier year of Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000) in regional spot buys, shows improv actors in their cars riffing on Sonic menu items."Consumers have seen the same old same old for so many years that when they see ads like this, it's like, 'Wow, these guys look at the world in a different way,'" says Greg Nations, gcd on Sonic for Barkley Evergreen & Partners in Kansas City, Mo.BBDO has used loosely scripted humor in spots for Federal Express and Sierra Mist. While the former used to employ a fast-talker played by Steve Carell, now starring in NBC's The Office, it has created a series of workplace ensemble ads. In one, a mailroom employee questions the availability of "French benefits." (They're fringe benefits, his co-workers inform him.)But neither Sonic nor Burger King was the first advertiser to take a semi-improvised approach to commercials. ESPN's "This Is SportsCenter" campaign featured the anchors' off-camera banter—a cutting-edge approach in the '90s, explains Hungry Man commercial director Bryan Buckley. They "were about tiny, improvised moments that even if they were done today would be considered contemporary," he notes. Now, advertisers with wider consumer targets are making the genre their own. Sierra Mist, which targets men and women ages 20 to 40, taking the humor mainstream was always a key part of the strategy, says BBDO ecd Bill Bruce. This year, Sierra Mist threw over the one-off gags that included an overheated bagpiper cooling his bum over a windy sidewalk grate. Instead, it introduced "The Mist-takes," a group of improv comics chosen in part for their familiarity to a wide range of viewers, Bruce says. The Sierra Mist team trolled for unknown talent at the country's best improv theaters, including The Ground-lings in Los Angeles and Second City in Chicago, but Bruce says they ultimately went with actors regularly seen on TV.Structured in the style of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the actors are given loose scripts or plot points, and improvise lines as they go. "The Sierra Mist campaign was based on the idea that we didn't want to spank the joke," says Bruce. "It's not a big goofy delivery or a big goofy reaction. You just want it to sit there and live on its own."While the situations may be absurd—not many convenience store clerks casually suggest that a customer dance for a soft drink—the spots never acknowledge that it is anything less than reality, he says. "It's a brand of humor that's appealing to us," Bruce says. "We weren't going for flavor of the month; we were just going for funny."Bruce counts Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office and Arrested Development among his favorite shows, and says that he hopes deadpan humor in absurd situations will replace "the old cymbal hit." So much so, in fact, that the agency is in discussions with the cast and undisclosed others about creating a series based on the concept, though the size of Sierra Mist's part in the show is one of many things being debated. Bringing the humor wide might just be what America needs to really grasp the concept, Bruce says. "Part of where some of these shows are finding difficulty is they're bringing in a lot of black humor," says Bruce, which might not sit well with mainstream America.Thompson has another theory about why these shows might not appeal to a wide audience. Unlike the hit shows that dominated television ratings during the '90s, all with laugh tracks, the shows' labyrinthine plots demand a level of attention that just a fraction of viewers care to give, he explains. Most Americans want something they can follow while preparing a sandwich in the kitchen, he says.But a 60-second spot does not demand that kind of commitment from the audience. Instead, the commitment comes from the agency and advertiser, which cut together more ads to keep the campaign fresh. Apart from Burger King, Sierra Mist produced 10 spots for broadcast and posted additional takes and bonus footage on its Web site, Mist-takes.com."Because they're like little mini-performances, constant repetition of the same one would completely wear it out," Thompson says. "If you can at least dilute those by changing them, you can stretch out their shelf life a little bit longer."Luckily for agencies, the improv nature of filming such ads often yields more spots than planned. Spots for Sierra Mist and Burger King were filmed with multiple cameras and minimal lighting, giving the appearance of an unpolished documentary and yielding hours of extra footage. Granger says this method catches "happy accidents" that provide more options in the editing booth. "These have the look of the cutting-edge, happening thing on TV," Thompson says. "Even though they're not the most popular, they're certainly the hippest."

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Office Maxed Out

Deanna Zammit

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Deanna Zammit