Smirnoff

And then, when I stepped into it there was the one idea we were running with, we were sort of about to make. And then that one got killed. And then this one was the next idea. This was for the evolution of [crosstalk 00:03:09] [1273]
It was great. Actually, it was really great. They were a bit frustrated at first, I think, because they weren't really in love with the first idea. And then we presented the second idea and I think everyone just really immediately just fell in love it. And I think it was because we're telling an authentic story and we're doing it in an authentic way. There's no smoke and mirrors. Nothing like that. It's just a story and some really beautiful photography to help bring it to life. So I think everyone was really passionate about it. I think that's why we were able to take it as far as we did. [1274],[1275]
You know, I definitely don't know if this came together really well, but the pieces fell into place, and it was sort of a blessing in disguise, which hopefully it'll be an interesting story. [1243]
"Great! I'm going to make something. This is awesome!" [1267]
A couple old ECDs that used to be here put me on it because they kind of had the idea already. It just needed some fine tuning, and it needed somebody to execute it. I was young, they wanted to give me a chance to get something made and do something cool. It was these four print ads. They were neat. They weren't amazing. They were neat. It was the story, four ads, and the chapter of the story was written down the bottle, and we were going to get the bottles and take pictures of it and do all this sort of stuff and make it look really beautiful. We were excited about it. The client was never really jazzed about it, though. We were excited about it. I was. I was like, "Great! I'm going to make something. This is awesome!" [1244]
The client was never really jazzed about it, though. We were excited about it. I was. I was like, "Great! I'm going to make something. This is awesome!" [1266]
Then a competitor brand came out with this heritage thing, and so the client freaked out and killed the whole thing. [1245]
Stoli, yeah. Killed the campaign because they thought it needed to be more tactical. So it's basically five months of work back to the drawing board. Sorry, bad luck. This was a [inaudible 00:20:38]. It was the day before we were going to shoot it. [1246],[1268]
So we had to call the photographer and tell him we weren't going to do it. We had to cancel everything, you know. [1247]
It was a pretty big thing, but then we went back to the drawing board and I came up these four print ads that were just this really beautiful historic photography, and each one told a chapter of the story. I used this really beautiful calligraphy stroke with a red line, and we used a calligrapher out of ... I want to say Holland. He lives in Holland or something like that. His name's- [1248]
So anyway, it started out as four next executions. The client fell in love with it, and we ended up making 12, which was a pretty huge thing for a print campaign to have 12 executions made. [1249]
A global print campaign. It turned out to be a really great thing, and all the pieces just fell into place, and now we have this really killer campaign where it could've been these four sort of dinky bottle ads, and now it's this pretty great thing. [1250],[1251]
Yeah. It's great for my portfolio- [1252]
... and everyone in the agency's really proud of it and we're going to try and send it to some award shows and just see what happens. It's pretty cool. [1253]
Well, there was three head people that looked at it, but then the way the client works is each market has to agree to the work and pick it up. So each market had to also say they liked it and buy into it. That was how we got so many of them made, because different countries liked different executions for specific reasons. [1254],[1255]
They're like, "We like chapters three through four." "Well, we like chapters one and two." So we managed to get all of them made using different clients from around the world saying [crosstalk 00:24:18] they liked it. That was a pretty interesting ... We had Ireland pay for the last two executions, and then Bulgaria paid for one and Greece paid for another, and then the US paid for the first six. [1256],[1257]
It was sort of a global effort to bring the whole thing together. There was a lot of people making decisions around it, but I think for the most part, it would've been four head clients that really put it on the table and approved the work throughout the process, and then said, "Okay. This is the body of work. Let's go sell it to the rest of the world." [1259],[1260],[1258]
I think they're definitely interested in doing good creative work, but when you're dealing with a liquor brand, the risk tolerance I would think, or in my personal experience, is pretty low just because there's so many legality issues that you have to be weary of. No guns in your ads, no things that talk about gun. All sorts of really ... stuff I would think was silly, but I can clearly see why they're opposed to doing it. [1261]
You know, at times there were, and we had to push and pull a little bit. And like I said, there were some budget constraints, but since they are the largest vodka brand in the world and they have such a big network, we were able to utilize the other countries' budgets to help get this thing made. Since it's going to be a global campaign, the US office, the US client paid for the first six. The global client, the global office, paid for I think two of them. Ireland paid for a couple, and then other countries sort of all pitched in. In the end, after pooling all the money together, it wasn't too much of a concern around the budget. [1262]
and then from that point on it wasn't too bad. We just rolled them out every two weeks, just executed and got them done. It really wasn't too tight. It wasn't too bad, but we've been working on it for the past year probably. I've been working on it for more than a year, but this specific campaign for about a year. [1264]
Time constraints for the first two executions were tight, [1263]
Great. We worked really well together. We ... talk, and I'd show him images, and we'd go back and forth. He'd read the writing and we'd say, "No, I don't like that, or I like this." Then, we have two guys that are above us that are really great, our CDs. They helped us tremendously. I mean, it wouldn't have happened without them, so. [1265]
Then, we have two guys that are above us that are really great, our CDs. They helped us tremendously. I mean, it wouldn't have happened without them, so. [1270],[1269]
And again, the client's really excited, so you have passion to do it and the client literally sat down with us again, not against but with their ego and thought every single point. Because it's about Vladimir Smirnoff's history, so we divided his life into chapters of when he started, then before the Bolshevik Revolution, during the Bolshevik Revolution, after the bolshevik Revolution, all those stages of what the brand went through, what he went through. All the way to when the brand went to America, etc. [1181],[1179]
I'm working on this really good Smirnoff print campaign, and it's good for me as a writer first off because it has long copy, and that's really are these days. Mostly it's like a visual and a logo. And it's something that apparently the agency has been trying to do for years, and now we finally made it happen. [1180]
I'm working on this really good Smirnoff print campaign, and it's good for me as a writer first off because it has long copy, and that's really are these days. Mostly it's like a visual and a logo. And it's something that apparently the agency has been trying to do for years, and now we finally made it happen. And again, the client's really excited, so you have passion to do it and the client literally sat down with us again, not against but with their ego and thought every single point. Because it's about Vladimir Smirnoff's history, so we divided his life into chapters of when he started, then before the Bolshevik Revolution, during the Bolshevik Revolution, after the bolshevik Revolution, all those stages of what the brand went through, what he went through. All the way to when the brand went to America, etc. [1178]
And the legal department gave us this document that we could work off of. But there are so many things that you can't say or imply, so you end up saying like family lore says or according to legend blah blah blah and so some headlines or copy points they wanted to kill for like stupid reasons that like we don't agree with. And the client was so passionate for this campaign that he like, we felt that he was on our side, and that's something where. [1185],[1183],[1182],[1184]
Right. So they are taking a risk in the sense that we're saying that without saying it basically. And we're not showing the product. [1186]
Inspiration. For the most part, we already decided really quickly that that's what we were gonna do. [1187]
Just like that. [1188]
Yeah, no. It was like obvious. Really obvious that that's what we should do. [1189]
If you like it wasn't even an effort on our end that was there for some reason. Budget constraints, no, because each market has their own budget, so we have all these ads and we're like. [1191],[1190]
Here they are. You have 12, you can run how many you want. That's your budget, you deal with it. [1193],[1192]
Hectic sometimes but not crazy. Because every ad has a headline and long copy, so that copy needed to be approved by my CD, the client and then legal, so it had to go many rounds, so it was a lot of midnights but not crazy. I felt like I had my time. [1194]
Crazy is when you feel that there's so little time you can't do a good job, but you know because of time constraint what you're delivering, you know it's not good or not your best. So that's what for me is crazy. This is like hectic but not crazy, hectic in the sense that yeah, sometimes there were deadlines, but I felt that I had time to deliver something I was proud of. [1195]
Reference Tags
[1273] Win-win conflict about ideas,[1274] Believes one has a hopeful path,[1275] Win-win conflict about ideas,[1243] Optimism,[1267] Believes one has a hopeful path,[1244] Organizational encouragement,[1266] Optimism,[1245] Finding Existing Ideas,[1246] Finding Existing Ideas,[1268] Risk compensation,[1247] Finding Existing Ideas,[1248] Resilience,[1249] Organizing effectively,[1250] Ikea effect,[1251] Organizing effectively,[1252] Self-serving bias,[1253] Ikea effect,[1254] Communicating ideas across domains,[1255] Win-win conflict about ideas,[1256] Communicating ideas across domains,[1257] Win-win conflict about ideas,[1259] Communicating ideas across domains,[1260] Decisive leadership,[1258] Win-win conflict about ideas,[1261] Risk compensation,[1262] Appropriate resources,[1264] Balanced workload pressure,[1263] Planning fallacy,[1265] Win-win conflict about ideas,[1270] Organizing effectively,[1269] Trust,[1181] Communicating ideas across domains,[1179] Win-win conflict about ideas,[1180] Ikea effect,[1178] Great example - Productive innovation norms,[1185] Balance of challenging work,[1183] Communicating ideas across domains,[1182] Great example - Productive innovation norms,[1184] Win-win conflict about ideas,[1186] Risk compensation,[1187] Confirmation bias,[1188] Confirmation bias,[1189] Confirmation bias,[1191] Appropriate resources,[1190] Balanced workload pressure,[1193] Appropriate resources,[1192] Trust,[1194] Balanced workload pressure,[1195] Balanced workload pressure