A significant imperative included within the brief was that the campaign should support Prominent Paints' sponsorship of the programme Disaster DIY and Make it Better with Prominent Paints on The Home Channel. With this underpinning the approach, the creative soon evolved to include a fully-fledged campaign with a 30-second ad, a 15-second opening and closing billboard, and five, five second stings at the heart of it. The campaign runs for one year and is further entrenched with print ads, as well as supporting outdoor executions, one of which is 37 meters high and 64 meters wide, and in-store point of sale.
The TV commercial, which is quite unlike any other of its ilk, begins with a scientist introducing viewers to the Prominent Paints laboratory in which a community of fictional characters live. Housed within a paint tin, each character personifies specific paint qualities all of which reaffirm the statement "More than just colour". The viewer is taken on a tour of the lab and introduced to the paint qualities one by one - each of which has been personified by finely chiselled characters. These include, durability, coverage, eco friendly, moisture resistance and low odour. The first character, 'Mr Durability', is portrayed by a muscular body builder being pummelled by drills and hammers, to no avail. With the next character, viewers meet 'Miss Eco Friendly', a levitating hippie in a Zen garden, while the 'moisture resistance' quality is personified by a group of picketers, all of whom have signs reading "down with damp" and "fight fungi", playing on resistance.
Brand Manager of Prominent Paints, Lani Carstens says, "Other brands would like consumers to believe that buying paint starts and ends with choosing a colour. However, there is more to paint than colour. It is one of the visual outcomes of paint, but is as important as various other characteristics and abilities of coatings, and I believe our new advert communicates that with clarity."
The shoot took place over two days and made use of 10 cast members who were painted entirely white, and shot in a white infinity curved studio. "If you weren't in the know, the shoot would have seemed very confusing with all the actors painted and dressed in white and posed against a white background, interacting with invisible props. But the entire laboratory background was created in 3D, bringing the advert to life later on in the post-production phase. The talent of the post-production crew lies in the uncanny ability to convince the viewer that the world that has been created in the lab really exists," says Carstens. Production took five weeks in total with the post-production phase taking three-and-a-half weeks to complete. Graeme Carr's post-production team at Pollen and Hey! Fever had the giant task of compositing all of the shot elements into the finished product.
human.kind's creative director, Matt Cooper says, "We want consumers to think about the paint itself rather just the colour element when buying product. There is a lot to consider and we identified the five strongest touch points to highlight in our adverts. The challenge was to find a way to represent each paint quality and bring them all to life."
To watch the TV advert click here:
http://www.makeitbetter.co.za. For more see
www.prominentpaints.co.za or
www.thehomechannel.co.za and follow the Disaster DIY links or call the customer care line on 0861 77 66 46.
