Brief Explanation

To demonstrate State’s brand motto ‘Click. Done’, we created a series of YouTube pre-roll ads. But unlike any other pre-rolls, we encouraged people to skip our ads. In fact, we begged people to skip them. And if they didn’t skip. We skipped them ourselves. In this film our character is happyily reading the morning paper, when suddenly his toaster catches on fire. After a brief moment, the fire spreads along the bench. He’s in trouble. The voice-over asks the viewer to ‘skip’ the ad to save him. The voice-over pleds again with the viewer to skip the ad as the blaze now roars throughout the entire kitchen. If the viewer still hasn’t skipped, our character attempts to save his own life by throwing fruit at the ‘skip button’. Finally he hits it with a banana saving himself and finishing the ad.

The Brief

State Insurance help people recover from life threatening situations every day. The problem is, legally we can’t show real danger. So how do you dramatise the devastating impact of a kitchen fire, without showing actual fire? And all within State’s blue, monochromatic brand guidelines – the antithesis of fire, and danger. We created an all blue set and a kitchen fire, made of reflective material that was cut into hundreds of little flames and hidden within the set. A number of different fans powered the flames which were all rigged to trigger at different times to create the sense the fire was spreading. By shining an orange (the secondary brand colour) light into the blowing flames, we were able to create the effect of a raging inferno – without creating any real danger for our hero.