helping a 150-year old brand make a new splash
Background & Challenge: The challenge was to increase brand awareness and positive recall of an insurance and investment company that had been heavily outspent in media by its competitors for over 50 years. Previously, the brand's commercials had consisted entirely of stock footage of humpback whales, the brand's icon, with accompanying VO.
The Strategy: Create TV spots using the whale icon in unexpected ways to create stories that would stick in consumers’ minds.
The Result: Pacific Life conducted annual 3rd-party research that showed between 10% and 15% increase in brand awareness and positive brand association year after year while these commercials aired.
No whales or children were harmed in the making of this spot. The kids were in a pool in Florida. The stock footage of humpbacks was photographed by sea-faring adventurers. We shot a bunch of beautiful blue water in the Bahamas for merging the two sources. The rest was the result of digital FX magic and a nice version of Vivaldi we commissioned from HUM in Santa Monica.
One of my favorite spots that I've worked on as copywriter. No animals were harmed (including a humpback whale), but some professional tennis players got soaking wet.
This spot shows Pacific Life's 'mascot' humpback whale in a new light, through the lens of the styles of famous artists. It features animation by Academy Award-winning artist Alexander Petrov. To create the spot's rich effects, Petrov used his fingertips as brushes. In his Moscow studio, the artist—best known for his 2000 Oscar-winning animated short, The Old Man and the Sea—painted 625 oil-on-glass pieces over a three-month period.
