Carlton Draught
Big Ad
George Patterson Partners
The epic television commercial has been a central feature of advertising for decades. Its defining characteristics are a dramatic setting, a huge cast, significant dollops of post-production, and a rather po-faced disposition. All of which makes it ripe for satire. In 2005, Melbourne-based advertising agency George Patterson Partners decided to spoof it. The Big Ad spot, for Carlton Draught beer, was the third ad in the Made From Beer campaign, which parodied traditional advertising notions. The first, Horses, mocked the earnest tone of many beer ads, while Canoe sent up clichéd ideas about masculinity. The third ad took the idea to a new level, however.
01-02 The cast perform for the cameras during the shoot for Big Ad, which saw hundreds of actors come together to simulate a giant man drinking a glass of beer, in a send-up of epic television commercials.
‘It’s a big ad! Expensive ad! This ad better sell some blooooooooody beer!’
‘Carlton Draught’s theme is “a good honest beer”,’ explain the creatives on the ad, writer Ant Keogh and art director Grant Rutherford. ‘So we were searching around for things we thought were a bit bogus, that we could take the piss out of, and we hit upon the idea of sending up “the epic”. It seems brands, especially airline or sports companies, tend to reach a point where they use “big” as their idea. It’s almost a given that you make a big ad. Obviously, epic ads like British Airways and Qantas came to mind. Also, Hollywood seems to be throwing a lot of money into big historical films, some better than others. We’ve seen epic scenes with gladiators and armies and Orcs, but we really felt the beer drinker was unrepresented. We wanted to redress that balance.’
The commercial’s soundtrack sets its tone – the creatives reworked Carl Orff’s triumphant cantata Carmina Burana by accompanying the familiar music with unexpected lyrics. As the ad gets underway, scores of men are shown striding through an epic landscape dressed in multicoloured gowns. While they walk, they chant ‘It’s a big ad, very big ad, it’s a big ad we’re in’, with the words also provided as subtitles. As the camera pulls back to a series of wide shots, we’re shown the people forming various shapes en masse, including a face and what appears to be a glass of beer. Meanwhile, the music intensifies: ‘It’s a big ad! For Carlton Draught! It’s just so freak…ing HUGE!’ We then reach the ad’s climax, where a giant hand is shown lifting the Carlton beer towards the face. The yellow-clad actors playing the beer then dance delightedly into the mouth of the face, while the last lines make the joke clear: ‘It’s a big ad! Expensive ad! This ad better sell some blooooooooody beer!’
03 Still from the finished commercial.
04 Storyboards for the commercial show how each shot in the ad was carefully planned.
The clients at Carlton Draught liked the irreverent idea from the start, and grew to love it as the creative team made it more expansive. ‘Big Ad started as a specific parody of an epic Australian airline ad, but going back to the client we realized we would need to be broader about it, which led us to something much better,’ says Keogh. ‘The notion and the words “big ad” were in the original version, but when we locked onto that idea, rather than sending up an airline, it became a larger thought. It really started to work when we sent up the whole thought of “epic” or “big” by repeating the line “it’s a big ad” in a focused and relentless way.… When we went back, the client actually said the words “this is the ad I’ve been waiting for”, so it’s one of the best presentations I’ve done. It’s actually a difficult script to present because of the musical aspect, but I made a little video that substituted the ridiculous new words against the original Latin version of the song.’
Despite the commercial being a parody, it would only have worked if it was convincing, which meant that the shoot required the same commitments – financially and creatively – as any other epic ad. It was shot in Queenstown in New Zealand by director Paul Middleditch, who had previously made the Canoe ad in the Made From Beer series. Middleditch brought in Andrew Lesnie, who had worked on the ‘Lord of the Rings’ series as cinematographer, to bring an epic touch to the photography of the ad.
‘The client didn’t get uptight about anything and that filtered on down the line.… Everyone from the client to the extras seemed to be on the same page.’
‘For the idea to work, we obviously needed something spectacular,’ say Keogh and Rutherford. ‘We had around 500 extras, and had the music playing over huge loudspeakers in the middle of an enormous valley. We shot the sequence in sections, so gradually over a few days the extras got to hear the words of the song and started laughing. We thought that was a good sign. Very soon the extras were in on the act, dancing around like lunatics, just like the main cast. It was a great feeling on set.’
‘Despite being a huge shoot, it was very relaxed. It was one of the most enjoyable shoots we’d been on,’ they continue. ‘The client didn’t get uptight about anything and that filtered on down the line. We just let Paul get on with it. I think we hardly asked for any changes. We knew he was on exactly the same page. Everyone from the client to the extras seemed to be on the same page.’ In fact, the only hitch that Keogh can recall from the shoot was bad weather on the first day. ‘It cost about $100,000,’ he says. ‘That meant some scary phone calls for the account service guys and the client.’
The post-production on the ad was a three-month job by Animal Logic, who created many of the wide shots in CGI, using original plates shot from a helicopter. Composer Cezary Skubiszewski rescored ‘Carmina Burana’, and the new version was played by the Melbourne Philharmonic Orchestra and sung by a choir of 200 people. ‘It was quite funny seeing them all sing those ludicrous words,’ say the creatives. ‘At one point early on, we had the lyric “big like Jon Bon Jovi’s hair”, but thought maybe it was a bit distracting. Still, it would have been fun to hear the choir sing it.’
Rather than immediately put the ad on television, the client and agency decided to try a ‘soft’ launch, via the internet. This is now standard practice when releasing ads, but back in 2005, when Big Ad came out, it was still fairly experimental. It became a huge viral hit, receiving millions of views within days, and quickly spread outside Australia to the rest of the world. The commercial has now entered the popular culture annals of Australia: ‘At the football, the crowd sang the song along with the ad,’ says Keogh. ‘In Australia it was voted ad of the decade, and in the top 50 Aussie ads of all time by the public.’
05 An early sketch by creative Ant Keogh shows the giant face consuming the beer.
‘We were searching around for things we thought were a bit bogus, that we could take the piss out of, and we hit upon the idea of sending up “the epic”.’
06 Photograph taken during a post-production shoot for the ad.
07-08 Part of the crowd was created in CGI, with these figures later placed within the ad. The development of the CGI people is shown here.
09-10 These images reveal how the crowds of figures and the landscape were shot separately, and then placed together in post-production.
11 Stills from the final ad show the giant guzzling down the glass of Carlton Draught. The subtitles reveal some of the amusing lyrics written to accompany the soundtrack, which was set to the familiar tune of Carmina Burana by Carl Orff.
‘For the idea to work, we obviously needed something spectacular. We had around 500 extras, and had the music playing over huge loudspeakers in the middle of an enormous valley.’