Here's a commercial that I made for the Nickelodeon Store. It was a lot of fun to make.
I was first asked to write a script to promote the store. We went to the store in Leicester Square for a recce and very nice it is too, chock to the gills with Nickelodeon goodness. They'd never promoted it on air before so there was some debate about what the message should be.
Initially I developed two treatments. This can be a useful exercise to help narrow down options. In this instance I did one that was properly ridiculous and a second that was a much more sensible, structured approach that delineated more of the features of the store into a giant list. The problem with giant lists is they're not very interesting. The full-on idiocy, while funny, didn't really answer the brief. I didn't feel like either was right but once you've got something written down it's much easier for people to feedback and comment on what they do and don't like.
Following on from the feedback the aspects we needed to focus on were identified.
- it's in Leceister Square, London
- there's a range of products for different properties
- it's a fun experience and not just somewhere to buy stuff
- everything is available online
- there is lots of localised product exclusive to the London/UK shop
- it needed Nickelodeon's attitude
SpongeBob Leicester Square-pants T shirt
With all this in mind I did my next pass at the script - I'd been struck by one of the T-shirts (pictured above) with a graffiti image reading 'SpongeBob Leicester Square-pants'. I'd asked whether we'd be able to get the artwork for the t-shirt. I always ask stuff like this, 'what assets can we get?' 'Can we get x y and z?' Usually in hope rather than expectation, but it's always worth asking.
In this case we were told that they had layered artwork for a lot of the products. Happy, happy, joy, joy. (And they have Ren and Stimpy stuff in the store if you're interested.) This made life much easier Leicester Square-pants had to be in there. Add in the SpongeBob lounge pants and some boxers and the script's pretty much writing itself.
One of the things I love about kids stuff is repetition. And kids love it, I know parents might not enjoy watching the same episode of Dora over and over and over, but repetition is reassuring. In a different context, it's also funny.
What's all this got to do with Beyonce?
If you want to get technical about it this script it's is actually an example of epistrophe. Which is when you end each sentence with the same word or phrase. To quote Saint Paul, 'When I was a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child'. So far so good 'but when I became a man I put away childish things.' So ignoring the last part of his advice I ploughed on with a script entirely centred on pants that captured the other key points of the brief whilst using epistrophe to give it structure.
Epistrophe is quite common in songs, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, covered by Jeff Buckley and everyone else and their mother, or That's Amore by Dean Martin or perhaps more recently by Beyonce in the chorus to Single Ladies (using the phrase 'put a ring on it' three times in the chorus). Somewhat more sophisticated than what I was up to, it's an example of using rhetoric to make your point. Epistrophe is one of the 'flowers' of rhetoric which would have been taught in school in Shakespeare's day, Mark Forsyth has written a rather wonderful book, The Elements of Eloquence about the subject and why the Romantic movement put the kibosh on teaching these incredibly useful things to people who might like some help expressing themselves.
I blame Wordsworth...
You should read the book though it'll change the way you think about language forever. Mark Forsyth's book, not Wordsworth's although apparently he's quite good too. Anyway I digress. Let's get back to the Nick Store and away from Beyonce's beguiling use of rhetoric.
With the new structure and approach we progressed rapidly, the script went through a few more rounds of changes to fine tune it and once it was approved we set about making it. Join me for part two where I cut holes in plush toys and iron lots of kids clothes...