My reply to "eric" is below - with some simple revisions to the original (which you can see in the ANS spot comment section).
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Here's where you can find the Super Bowl spot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQKk3PI-DW8
John Hage (writer) and Bernie O'Dowd (art director) at Deutsch/LA came up with it. I have to say I liked it from the first time I saw it - which was in a rough cut two Fridays before the Super Bowl. It's a very good spot in my opinion.
It didn't get a lot of talk, but all of the talk it got was positive. And it was one of the higher scoring spots with regular people too.
Unfortunately, I've heard through the grapevine that there was one major complainer. NAMI (National Assoc for Mental Illness) thought that the spot made lite of suicidal ideation. GM - after a few days - decided to alter the spot to soften this. I haven't seen the remake.
Knowing the people at Deutsch, I'm sure it'll be good, too.
The thing I worked on (guided/oversaw might be better words) was a "movie trailer" for the spot. It was to be used on the Internet to "tease" people into looking for the spot when it ran on the game and, then, after the game to get those who hadn't seen it yet to watch the full 60 second spot elsewhere.
I found the trailer as recently as early last week on YouTube. It has since been removed from that YouTube page - presumably because of the above NAMI controversy.
It was more or less a cut down of the 60 with a Don Lafontaine-like VO along the lines of "See what happens when everything you once loved is suddenly taken away. And you're a robot."
It had a melodramatic flair that matched the emotional tenor of the original - though there had been a version of the spot that was also funny that made it look like one of those ridiculous action adventure stories of a Robot driven to madness when everything he ever lived for turned into a nightmare.
This is a snap I took of the Robot in the Deutsch/LA lobby the week before the game. It took several puppeteers to animate it.Very cool.
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ps. the Bernie O'Dowd mentioned here is, indeed, the skateboard guy. I knew nothing about him before sharing an office with him, but apparently he was quite well known at one time. Google his name and you'll see.
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EDIT: Here's where you'll find the Robot spot with the new ending.
http://www.gm.com/company/onlygm/quality/index.html?cmp=RobotOLA_Branding
3 comments:
Everything good pisses off somebody!! How long before America realizes this...or rather re-learns this?
It's a robot, for christ's sake...it's allowed to commit suicide. Sure people do the same thing and it's not funny. But as Lenny Bruce proved, there's humor in everything if we just act like intelligent adults. Once upon a time, Deutsch would never have agreed to rework the ad. Am I the only one who feels like everything that was fought for and eventually won in the 50s, 60s and early 70s has been pissed away?
The again maybe I'm just cranky tonight.
Cranky looks good on you.
And is right in this case.
Though, I am sympathetic to Deutsch's plight. They've been working - it seems - with this client for quite a long time and I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision.
Besides, it ran the way it should've run during the biggest ad show on earth: The robot jumped.
I support the right to death. Humans, robots, either way.
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