"It is part of the Sony heritage to do things for real" - Sony Europe art director on why the brand is constantly challenging itself when it comes to TV advertising
Pushing the boundaries of what it can achieve in TV advertising is one of Sony’s “greatest challenges” with the brand constantly on the lookout for “something no one has ever seen before” according to Sony Europe art director Richard Small.
Speaking with The Drum as Sony’s latest campaign, ‘Bubbles’, is released Small said the creative concept was to “take something that is naturally beautiful and make it even more beautiful”.
Created by adam&eveDDB to promote Sony’s 4K ultra-HD offering, Small explained that “this was the first time we’ve shot in so much detail” going even further than last year’s ‘Petals’ campaign.
“The advert was all about how far we could push it and how close into the detail we could go,” said Small. “There was a lot of back and forth with adam&eveDDB who were really great in accommodating our technological restrictions, because 4K is a really new technology.”
Shot on location in Canada over five days the finished advert has no special effects or CGI manipulation as it is “part of the Sony heritage to do things for real”, a trait evident in previous advertising campaigns such as 'Bouncing Balls' and 'Paint' where the brand sent thousands of coloured bouncing balls cascading through the streets of San Francisco back in 2005 and exploded 70 thousand litres of paint over a housing estate in Glasgow.
Small explained: “We knew that this phenomenon happened and if we had used CGI I don’t think the end result would be quite as beautiful. If we just used a computer model it would have been boring and average, the surprise is that every bubble is different.”
Prior to shooting Small revealed that adam&eveDDB and production company Wanda Productions had extensively researched the temperature and solutions needed to create the right effects.
“We had a dog and children on set but everything worked out perfectly and the bubbled behaved more than I thought they would, but that was down to the research carried out beforehand,” said Small.
“We were all confident going into the shoot that we could get what we wanted from the bubbles.”
Airing online - in 4K - and on TV screens and in-store from Saturday 1 November, viewing the finished product in 4K is “even better” than it was in real life.
“To see it in 4K and in all those millions of pixels truly is incredible,” said Small.
The full campaign spans TV, cinema, OOH, press, digital and search and will run end of December 2014.