Hill Holliday channels West Side Story in this inventive ad for LG that broke on the Golden Globes—staging an impressively choreographed street fight between two rival clothing gangs, the delicates and the regulars.
There are no humans inside the clothes. Instead, pants, dresses, shirts, blouses and jackets grapple furiously in an alley, with kicks! punches! ducks! and spins! (I think that little white number with the sash has been putting in extra time at the dojo.)
A voiceover explains: "Since the beginning, delicates and regulars have never gotten along. But now, with the new LG TwinWash, they can live peacefully separate, but washed at the same time," because the unit has dual compartments.
"The TwinWash is a very big launch for LG, so the spot needed to feel equally as big," Hill Holliday group creative director Kevin Daley tells AdFreak. "We also wanted a story that could resonate globally. While it may feel very different from the rest of the category, at the heart of the spot is a simple product demonstration, and for that reason the client was able to really get behind it."
Disembodied clothing is something of an advertising sub-genre, and permutations of the basic idea have graced everything from Gap commercials to gun-violence PSAs.
For LG, the creative team—including MJZ director Carl Erik Rinsch and effects wizards at Digital Domain—added the stylized fight element, drawing inspiration from Hollywood imagery.
"We thought about quite a few film references: Rumble Fish, West Side Story and even Michael Jackson's 'Bad' video," Daley says. "We wanted to create a fight that was a mix of street brawl, martial arts and dance. Think Crouching Tiger meets Rumble Fish with a touch of ballet mixed in."
The frenetic action was crafted over four months, initially using motion-capture footage of dancers and martial artists. The alley was a 3-D scan of an actual New York City location recreated by computer animation. "There were many stages in the process where we were asking our client to take a leap of faith and trust us," says Daley. (Judging from the final product, we suppose those LG honchos were more than just empty suits looking to stick with the predictable.)
In addition to the minute-long spot, LG took the show on the road a few weeks back, with performances in Times Square staged by Broadway choreographer Joshua Bergass and Jim Henson Workshop puppeteer Michael Schupbach. These live epic battles between delicates and regulars featured a troupe of dancers and 16-foot-tall puppets. Oh, and a 20-foot-high TwinWash machine was on hand, naturally.
CREDITS
Client: LG
Vice President of Marketing, LG Electronics U.S.: David VanderWaal
Director, Brand Marketing & Communications, LG Electronics U.S.: Angela Smith
Agency: Hill Holliday
Chief Creative Officer: Lance Jensen
Group Creative Director: Kevin Daley
Creative Director: Rick McHugh
Agency Executive Producer: Paul Shannon
Agency Assistant Producer: Jill Wyman
Account Team: Kerry Benson, Scott Adler, Jacqueline Doherty
Planner: Baysie Wightman
Production Company: MJZ
Executive Producer: Kate Leahy
Producer: Nathaniel Greene
Director: Carl Erik Rinsch
Cinematographer: Cory Geryak
Line Producer: Nathaniel Greene
Steadicam Operator: Ross Coscia
Digital Production Company: Home VFX with Digital Domain, Alt VFX, + Framestore LA
Digital Effects Supervisor: Eric Barba
Edit House: Stitch Editorial
Editor: Dan Swietlik
Music/Sound Design House: SOUTH Music & Sound Design
Music Producer: Ann Haugen
Post Production: Home VFX with Digital Domain, Alt VFX, + Framestore LA
Executive Post Producer: Nathaniel Greene
Post Producer: Elizabeth Knovick
VFX Company: Home VFX
Product CG Company: Alt VFX