How the Filming of the Filming of Ads Helps Sell

While preparing its super-secret Super Bowl commercial, a Nike production crew spent several hours last week filming hockey great Wayne Gretzky on the ice. Next week, it plans to film the man of many sports, Bo Jackson, on the gridiron.

In turn, this film crew is also being closely followed--and filmed. But those following them aren’t spies from Reebook. Nor are they Jackson or Gretzky groupies. Those in the second film crew are actually Nike employees. They are preparing a video about the making of the commercial.

That’s right, a commercial for a commercial.

“America’s heroes are in our commercials,” said Liz Dolan, director of public relations at Nike. “So the outside world is intrigued by these ads. They want to see more than the 30-second commercial. They want to see every moment these guys are on camera.”

This seems to be the latest rage on Madison Avenue. For years, Hollywood has made “behind-the-scenes” films about the making of major motion pictures such as “Star Wars.” Now the ad world is getting into the act in a big way. Nike also recently filmed a “behind-the-scenes” video of its popular “Bo Knows Baseball” commercial, in which Jackson appears to skate, play tennis and even strum an off-key tune with guitar legend Bo Diddley.

The video about that ad, “The Making of Bo,” is already being shown to customers at a number of Footlocker shoe stores. And portions of the video--particularly the part in which Jackson knocks over the commercial’s director, Joe Pytka--have been aired during sports broadcasts on TV stations nationwide.

A number of other big-time advertisers--from Lee Jeans to Taco Bell--have also recently discovered that videos about the making of TV commercials can become great marketing tools to inspire employees, impress retailers--and in some cases, intrigue consumers.

“If you’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a commercial--and millions to buy broadcast time for it--a couple thousand dollars a day more for a video crew is money well spent,” Dolan said. Experts estimate that these videos can cost $20,000 to $100,000 to produce.

Nike has even created an in-house production division to make the videos. Multimedia Presentations in Culver City, which specializes in making commercial videos, made some for Lee Jeans and Taco Bell. The videos were primarily used to motivate employees and, in the case of Lee, impress retailers.

“There are lots of people in Middle America who have never seen how a commercial is made,” said Christopher Raser, vice president and executive producer at Multimedia Group. “To them, this is very exciting.”

Advertising experts say this can be an extremely effective marketing tool.

“It stresses to employees that the company is trying to include them as partners in everything they do,” said John A. Czepiel, associate professor of marketing at New York University. “It’s the closest thing you can do to inviting them along to the commercial shoot.”

Once the Lee Jeans salespeople have seen the video, they’re sent out to show it to executives at department stores and clothing stores that might carry Lee Jeans. “Hopefully, it will motivate them to increase their orders,” said Harish Bhandar, an account executive at the Minneapolis agency Fallon McElligott, which creates ads for Lee Jeans.

Last year, Taco Bell videotaped the making of its “Run for the Border” TV commercials. These ads feature a number of risky stunts, including one in which two guys jump off a fast-moving train. Taco Bell showed its behind-the-scenes video to 1,000 employees at a company meeting.

“People are always interested in seeing how advertising is made,” said Elliot Bloom, senior director of public affairs at Taco Bell. The same video was later shown to Taco Bell franchisees. “There’s is no price you can place on the excitement you can help to build when a new ad campaign is just breaking,” said Bloom.

But to the crews filming these videos, it’s often a race against time.

The Lee Jeans video, for example, was filmed in Los Angeles in late January. Less than two weeks later, it was shown to 300 Lee Jeans sales executives at a meeting in Orlando.

And while some top commercial directors don’t always enjoy the extra noise--and extra people--on their sets, they’re beginning to accept these video crews as necessary evils.

“With some commercials, the publicity can be as important as the commercials themselves,” said Joe Pytka, who directed the recent Bo Jackson commercial and is directing Nike’s upcoming Super Bowl ad. Pytka also directed the Lee Jeans ad that was featured in a recent video.

Will these behind-the-scenes videos take the “magic” away from some ads?

In some cases, perhaps. For example, the “Making of Bo” behind-the-scenes video reveals that Bo Jackson wasn’t really wearing skates when he appeared on the ice. “That disappointed me a little,” said Pytka, who never showed Jackson’s feet during that sequence in his ad.

Pepsi, which makes some of the most talked-about commercials of any company, says it doesn’t see the value in these videos. “The problems of trying to get a second camera crew on to a set can be a real hinderance,” said Tod Mackenzie, a Pepsi spokesman. “Everything else we do takes a back seat to the commercial itself.”

New Bozell Division Targets Entertainment

Bozell, the Los Angeles agency that places broadcast ads for clients such as Warner Bros. and Lorimar Television, last week said it was setting up a special entertainment division.

But the new division won’t just handle TV and film spots. “When someone says entertainment, everyone thinks of movies and television,” said Dick Porter, who has been named vice president and director of the entertainment division. “But it also includes other activities like theme parks, sporting events and even visitors bureaus.”

Those are the kind of businesses that Bozell’s new division hopes to attract.

Within the next year, Porter said he hopes to double the estimated $25 million in current billings of clients in Bozell’s entertainment division. That may require some fancy footwork by Porter, who formerly worked at Bozell and most recently was vice president of media at MGM. Several years ago, Bozell lost DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, one of its larger entertainment clients.

But no matter how much advertising a film does, there’s one form of marketing that usually works best of all, Porter said. “It’s word of mouth that makes a picture a hit or miss.”

Contest Didn’t Fly at First With Ad Chief

What does American Airlines have in common with Harry’s Bar & American Grille?

How about a “write-alike” contest? And one Los Angeles advertising executive isn’t too thrilled about it.

That executive is Paul Keye, chairman of Keye/Donna/Pearlstein. About 11 years ago, Keye came up with an idea to boost business at Harry’s Bar in the ABC Entertainment Center. He proposed an International Imitation Hemingway Competition, in which writers were asked to compose short, original pieces that mimic Hemingway’ prose. An ad for the contest was placed in the New Yorker magazine, and the winner was sent to the original Harry’s Bar & American Grille in Florence, Italy--an old Hemingway haunt.

Since then, the contest has made national news and won international recognition, although it was discontinued in the past year.

Well, American Airlines recently announced a suspiciously similar competition in its publication, American Way. Except that this contest asks people to mimic the writing of author William Faulkner. The winner of the Faulkner Write-Alike Contest gets a round-trip ticket for two to any place in the U.S. that American flies.

“I felt it was so derivative and so unoriginal that I wrote them a blistering letter,” Keye said. “But the response I received from them was so gracious, that I’ve decided to let it go.”