Droga5 has created a darkly amusing ad for Rustlers, a flame-grilled, microwavable hamburger brand called “80 years of torment”. Via Adweek:
“Initially we had a number of different approaches to film,” David Kolbusz, chief creative officer of Droga5 London, tells Adweek. “But we kept returning to one script which was a piss-take of that overly sentimental, well-worn ad construct where you follow a character’s journey from adolescence to old age, shot through rose-tinted glasses, and soundtracked to tinkling piano music. We thought it would be funny if you took a character on the same journey through time, but just kicked the shit out of him at every step along the way.”
Somesuch director Steve Rogers helped bring the ad to life.
“As we dug into it with Steve, it moved pretty far from the original vision and kind of became its own thing. Less pastiche,” Kolbusz says. “We fell in love with this repeated, metronomic abuse perpetrated on our hero. It became a lot cuttier than we’d originally intended. More vignettes. And we’d actually shot the ad with the intention of aping the look of the film from each different era. But in the end it felt better to keep all of the past in black and white—like a horrible memory—only introducing color in the glorious present.”
The product is typically consumed by young men but bought by their parents. So, the ads had to appeal to both. “We tried to create work that had a bit of spikiness to it and would appeal to our younger audience, but in a way that wouldn’t alienate the ones doing the shopping,” says Kolbusz. “Poking fun at the hardship our target’s parents and grandparents had to endure seemed like a nice way in.”