shots Awards 2015: Mobile Campaign of The Year

Concluding our coverage of the shots Awards 2015, we ask our gold winners – including directing duos DANIELS and Terri Timely, agency W+K London, post house Final Cut, plus the creatives that took on the Nazis – about the inspiration behind their work and the reactions to their well-deserved wins

 
At what point in the process did Wieden+Kennedy approach you and how much of the idea had already been completed?

DANIELS [aka Daniel Scheinert & Daniel Kwan, directors] We had about a month from when they approached us to the start of shooting. And the idea was simply to do an episodic campaign for Instagram around the idea ‘Spring is weird’.
We were super-involved in scripting the episodes and W+K guided us through it and sort of acted as our development executives, telling us when we were too crazy, but often encouraging us to go even weirder.

What were your first thoughts when you heard the idea?

We were excited about the opportunity to invent a format. Serialised Instagrams is such a silly sounding challenge and we love silly sounding challenges. We were also so flattered they wanted us to write it with them.  

Had you ever worked on a project which utilises Instagram before?

Daniel Scheinert has an Instagram with funny pictures of his dog. And sometimes funny videos of his dog. But that’s it. So Instagram as a format was a brave new world for us, which definitely drew us to the project.
 
What were the positives and negatives of using that platform to host the films?

The negative is definitely that every director stresses when you have cram your story into 15 seconds and throw away tons of funny moments because they just don’t fit. The most fun part was tracking the disparate reactions from commenters as the series took a turn for the weird week after week. Some folks loved the cute episodes at the beginning (but we were quietly groaning to ourselves), then shit hits the fan and suddenly the cute lovers were wonderfully weirded out and a different genre of internetters started celebrating the videos.  

How important was the casting for the campaign and why were Jenny Slate and Paul Dano the right choice?

The key to casting for us was grabbing actors folks would fall in love with and want to watch every week.  And so we selfishly went big and reached out to our favourite actors and got unbelievably lucky that they said yes. We were already talking to Paul about our feature film and doing this project together was hugely valuable as an initial collaboration where we all fell in love; Paul, ourselves and our crew. Next we have to make a feature film with Jenny!  

Could you tell, as the campaign came together, that it was going to be something special?

The two moments that come to mind were the day when Gap approved the idea of the couple seeing themselves on a billboard; we were just thrilled that we had permission to comment on advertising inside of an advertisement. Then the next challenge was making a post-modern, self-aware ad come full circle and end with something heartfelt. The other special moment was when Paul and Jenny said yes. We already mentioned that part. But holy shit! How crazy is that? We got Paul Dano and Jenny Slate to do our Instagram commercials!

What was the most difficult part of the process?

We shot 12 spots. I think it was a three day shoot... Maybe two days. Anyway, it was a race to the finish. But the agency and clients understood the ambition and helped us rock and roll and finish on time. And our amazing crew (mostly the same guys from our music videos) just jammed and did an amazing job.  

Do you think mobile-based campaigns such as this will become increasingly popular?

We certainly love the narrative that this format allowed us to inject into something branded. And the way we got to play with an internet audience’s expectations. But who knows if more folks will do it. Maybe we’re the only ones. We killed it. Owned the genre. And now everybody else is too scaywd to even twy. Wike a bunch a wittle babies.  

How did you feel when the winner of the shots Award was announced?

Flattered, shocked and happy for our family at Prettybird. Because they deserve all the trophies.

Find out more about the shots Awards 2016 here.