Who: Skip, with Courage for strategy and creative; UM for media; Spy Films for production (directed by Evan Goldberg); Outsider Editorial for editorial; Alter Ego for colour and online; Eggplant for sound.
What: “The Writer’s Room,” a campaign on the “Skip to the Good Part” platform, starring Canadian actor turned Hollywood superstar Seth Rogen—who, along with longtime creative partner Evan Goldberg, assisted on creative development and storyboarding.
When & Where: The campaign launched nationally today (Oct. 8), running across TV, digital and social. There’s a two-and-a-half minute anchor film available on Skip’s YouTube channel, with a 30-second spot and :15 and six-second cutdowns.
Why: Skip is describing the campaign as a “new chapter” in its journey of championing Canadian culture, humour and convenience, while reinforcing its brand promise to help Canadians “Skip it” to get everything they need from restaurant food, to groceries and drugstore essentials.
Courage co-founder and chief creative officer Dhaval Bhatt said that the agency wanted to go bigger for the next wave of ads on the one-year-old “Shoulda Skipped It” platform, and the white-hot Rogen was the perfect personality.
“Right now, I don’t think there’s any bigger name in Hollywood than Seth Rogen,” said Bhatt. Rogen’s inside-Hollywood show The Studio is coming off 13 wins at the recent Emmy Awards, including Best Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Rogen and Outstanding Comedy Series.
But while Skip is well-known in the Canadian food delivery space, so are key rivals like DoorDash and Uber Eats, whose apps are often right beside Skip on people’s phones.
“The name of the game is top-of-mind awareness,” said Bhatt. “The work just has to stand out. It just has to resonate… From a marketing standpoint, you’re not giving anyone anything new, but you’re reminding them of what you do in a more fun, relevant and engaging way.”
How: The creative approach is a clear nod to Rogen’s Emmy Award-winning show The Studio, showing him and a creative partner spitballing ideas for new movies, only to realize that all of the scenarios are implausible because in each instance, the main character could have simply “Skipped it.”
In one scenario, Rogen and his partner envision a mob movie in which a group of wise guys are planning to kill a guy named Vinny at an old-school Italian restaurant. Just as they’re starting to envision the scene, Rogen dejectedly points out that it doesn’t make sense because Vinny could have avoided this whole situation. “He coulda just Skipped it,” says Rogen.
Another concept shows Rogen getting “de-aged” to play one of a pair of university students trying to purchase a pregnancy test, only to keep encountering people they know. His partner points out that they could have avoided the embarrassment if they just “Skipped the pregnancy test.”
“You can Skip that too?” What a world,” says Rogen.
The full two-and-a-half-minute spot unfolds with references to Hollywood movies like Rocky, as well as Superbad (written by Rogen and Goldberg), a stranded-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods horror movie, and a sci-fi movie where everything in the future gets teleported to your home (“That’s literally what Skip already does, dude” responds a frustrated Rogen).
Wait, is Canadian creative becoming more celebrity driven? Rogen joins celebrities including Eugene Levy (Sleep Country Canada), Will Arnett (RBC), and Keanu Reeves (Rogers) in current or recent Canadian campaigns.
Is this a sign that Canadian marketers are doing more of this type of celebrity driven work? Bhatt said that Courage’s constant reminder to clients is that the battle for consumers’ attention is huge. “We have this approach where we try to push our clients to do big things that we know will drive results for them. Sometimes celebrities have been part of the equation, and clients will see the results and say ‘We like that,’” he said.
The important thing to remember, he said, is that the celebrity shouldn’t become the idea. “You still have to have a great idea, [not just] put a name to it and you’re done,” he said.
What’s Jon Hamm’s future?: It feels like the big question whenever Skip introduces new advertising that doesn’t feature Jon Hamm (or even Jon Hamm’s dog): Have we seen the last of the Mad Men star, who’s become a beloved mainstay of Skip’s advertising since 2018, appearing in more than 30 pieces of advertising.
Bhatt played coy on this one, and said that “it’s always a possibility” viewers will see Hamm in future advertising. “He’s obviously been great for the brand, but I think that for us, the brand and the platform needs to be bigger than the celebrity,” he said. “Our goal is to make it bigger, stronger and better, and who knows, maybe there’s a cameo, maybe there’s a comeback and maybe there [are ads] with both of them or multiple celebrities. Who knows.”
This story first appeared on Campaign Canada.
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