Sleep easy, America. Bo Dietl is on the case. What case, you say? The truth about your sandwich meat.
It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. Dietl, former NYPD detective, current private investigator and professional blowhard, is the man to tell cold, hard truths. And the cold, hard truth about your cold cuts is that you should be eating Arby's. Because Arby's slices its lunch meat fresh in the store daily before putting it on your sandwich. Because Subway does no such thing. And because Arby's is paying Dietl a lot of money to tell you that truth. Seriously, though, he loves Arby's, too. Because it's fresh sliced roast beef is delicious. At least, it was the first time he ate it, at an Arby's in California back in 1969, when all the other boomers were eating mushrooms at Woodstock in New York.
Earlier this month, Dietl appeared in a 30-second Arby's spot, cracking wise outside a Subway lunch-meat slicing facility somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Today, he's back in this longer-form version of the argument, a five-minute video directed by Larry Charles, who also directed such heavy-hitting Sacha Baron Cohen exposés as Borat, Bruno and The Dictator. In the new Arby's clip, Dietl delivers more Dietl antics, reminiscing about his days as a cop, waxing poetic about America, and grilling a former Subway employee about the lack of in-store slicing. He also takes a couple of not-quite-bare-knuckle swings at Arby's competitor, like shoving a meat slicer into the drive-through window of a Subway, to the amusement the employee on the other side, who otherwise doesn't seem to care in the least.
Perhaps most insightful are Dietl's man-on-the-street interviews with the regular folk who foolishly assume Subway's meats are sliced "in the back" of each store. In that montage, the brand's spokesman gets out of the way of what's a fairly hard-hitting message, aimed at undermining Subway's core "Eat fresh" motto.
Overall, the video doesn't reveal much about the evils of Subway's long-distance meat craft, other than it is long distance. Nonetheless, Dietl's gruff charm conveys the sense that the brand is having fun with the pot shots, even if it's not really a good-natured ribbing. Entertaining as it may be, though, it doesn't necessarily feel all that fresh.
CREDITS
Client: Arby's
Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Boulder, Colo.
Worldwide Chief Creative Officer: Rob Reilly
Executive Creative Director: Alex Burnard
Creative Directors: Scot Kaplan, Vladislav Ivangorodsky, James Maravetz
Associate Creative Director: Mark Schruntek
Director of Video Production: Chad Hopenwasser
Executive Integrated Producer: Lisa Effress
Junior Producer: Kelli Espinoza
Live Action Production Company: Independent Media
Director: Larry Charles
Executive Producer: Susanne Preissler
Line Producers: Lindsay Skutch, Beth Aranda-Hodzic
Post Production: Method NY
Executive Producers: Robert Owens, Angela Lupo
Producer: Matthew Engel
Lead Compositor: Aidan Thomas
VFX Supervisor: Gil Baron
Set Supervisor: Rob Hodgson
Compositors: Sean Wilson, Marty Taylor, Ian Holland, Matt Welch
Digital Matte Painter: Marc Samson
Editorial Company: Cut + Run
Editor: Jay Nelson
Executive Producer: Melati Pohan
Assistant Editor: Ben Jones
Food Shoot Production Company: Assembly Films
Director: Kevan Bean
Executive Producer: Gloria Colangelo
Line Producer: Pete Dever
Production Supervisor: Kerri Johnson
Executive Integrated Music Producer: Caitlin Rocklen
Sound Mixer Company: Lime Studios & Beacon Street Studios
Sound Design: Jeremy Brill
Music Supervisor: Chip Herter
Visual Effects Company: Method Design
Creative Directors: Mike Sausa, Steve Viola
Producer: Dan Masciarelli
Coordinator: Mary Melendez
2D Artists: Bernard Crosland, Jessica Engles, Alex Gibbs
3D Artists: Omid Ensafi, Pouyan Navid, Jamie Sawyer
Content VP Group Account Director: Scot Beck
Content Account Director: Justin Marciani
Content Supervisor: Jessica Martin
Content Manager: Julie Pfleger
Assistant Content Manager: Sandy Florez
Business Affairs: Natalie Greenman
Cognitive Anthropologist: Erica David