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The Seven Up
brand had seen some erosion of interest by the sales force due to the
proliferation of clear soft drinks in the market.
A critical part of that sales force were the bottler’s own people. A
curious element of the soft drink business is that bottlers often handle
competing brands under one roof. If you loose their people, you won’t even
have the facings in-store when consumers are ready to buy!
One of the main
challenges to the national sales film is the narration of the film – voice and
words. This year, top executives were agonizing how to mesh a company message
with a film that was also entertaining and short. Concurrently, Seven Up was
also co-sponsoring a car driven by one of the Andretti racing family in the CART
Formula 5000 racing tour. Creatives at the lead agency had initially suggested
that a film could be built around racing stock footage and interjecting a few
visuals of the client-sponsored car. Calvin made the point that a film using
largely stock footage ran the risk of transparently derivative.
In consultation
with director Calvin Crane, an alternate plan was developed hit on to build the
film on an upcoming event: the Grand Prix of Denver.
Seven Up top
management in Dallas was used to elaborate storyboards and presentations in
order to gain their business. Our presentation consisted of a flip chart with
“Winning Is Not Everything” on page 1 and “It’s the Only Thing” on
page 2. The pitch lasted about 30 seconds. We said first you’re going to see a
film featuring exciting original racing footage featuring your car… along with
a powerful track… and then you’re going to see this. We showed the chart.
The CEO was worried as to whether we could get the production launched in time.
Speaking up, the VP of Marketing said, “go.” We left from DFW within the
hour.
The
filming went off without a hitch. After extensive postproduction image
processing, elaborate sound effects work, and a crash delivery schedule, the
award-winning film was delivered to resounding success.
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