Forget the new Bond movie; adland has its own, far more exciting
adventure story. The latest spat between McCann-Erickson and Tony Kaye
over a new Bacardi commercial has all the ingredients of a Hollywood
blockbuster, complete with islands in the Caribbean, kidnappings and
private detectives.
It’s not a situation many commercials directors find themselves in, but
behind the high drama that seems to follow Kaye wherever he goes lies
the age-old problem of what happens when director, agency and client
disagree about the final cut of an ad.
The last time such a disagreement went public was last summer, when
Publicis hired Paul Arden to shoot its ’open up’ global commercial for
Nescafe.
Arden shot an ad that showed ’real’ people drinking coffee all around
the world with a recurring horizontal line in each shot linking them
together.
Nescafe asked for radical changes to be made, including a change in the
music and the shooting of extra scenes featuring happier faces and more
product. In the 30-second version of the ad, as much as 60 per cent of
the footage was shot by someone else.
Arden took the unprecedented step of asking for his name to be
disassociated from the commercial, and sent copies of his own version to
all the creative directors and heads of television in London. But his
producer, Nick Sutherland-Dodd, is philosophical about the affair. ’When
you work with a very big client like Nestle, you know the risks.
Generally, you fight for a while and then, at some point, you have to
give in. The fight - persuading clients that maybe they should take a
bit of a risk - is part of the fun. But at the end of the day, the
client owns the film.’
Perhaps surprisingly, this is the overwhelming view of directors and
producers. Clare Timms, joint managing director of Union Commercials,
compares it with getting an interior designer to decorate your house,
then deciding you want to make a few changes. ’It might ruin the whole
picture, but it’s your house after all,’ she says. ’If you get a good
agency and a good director then it shouldn’t happen; the client should
be pleased with the end result. Rows used to happen more often, but
there are a lot more directors competing for business nowadays.’
That McCann and Bacardi hired Malcolm Venville to reshoot scenes for the
ad without Kaye’s involvement is testament to the reduced power of the
director. In the face of increased competition, commercials directors
are, it seems, having to work at ditching the luvvie stereotype in
favour of a more businesslike approach.
’Disagreements do occur more often than you could possibly imagine in
small ways,’ James Studholme, managing director of Blink Productions,
says. ’When you’re involved in a shoot, emotions run high and that is,
after all, what the client is trying to harness. In the 70s and 80s the
cutting rooms were full of flying crockery, but directors are much more
pragmatic these days. They realise that this isn’t an art-house love-in;
we’re involved in making commercials.’
Another factor is the increased role of pre-production: agencies are
putting much more time into preparing the ground before the cameras even
start to roll. It is all too easy to blame the director if the finished
product is not what the client expected, but often the agency or the
client is at least as much to blame for not providing a clear enough
picture of what they expect. Problems arise when agencies have a less
than perfect script and hire a really good director in the hope that he
or she will paper over weaknesses.
Patrick Collister, executive creative director of Ogilvy & Mather,
recalls a Guinness commercial that Kaye shot in 1995. ’It was a
marvellous film and Tony was really keen that people should see it, but
Guinness was just as keen that they should not,’ he says. ’Our
experience was that he was nothing but helpful. A director needs a tight
brief and a tight script. I think the problem a lot of the time is that
people are trying to capture Tony’s brilliance without giving him the
parameters within which to be brilliant.’
Agencies also tend to be more insecure nowadays and less likely to fight
for the creative option or to argue with the client who wants to water
down a commercial or add more product shots and happy faces.
Even the practice of directors putting their own, unapproved cuts on
their reels is dying out. It is not always difficult to distinguish
between the version a client has approved and the director’s own
preferred version, and a reel that is all director’s cuts makes alarm
bells ring. It could mean they are more difficult to work with.
Some believe that Kaye’s antics do no favours to an industry that is
trying to shake off a reputation for histrionics. But it is hard to
avoid a sneaking sense of admiration for Kaye. Whatever the verdict on
the commercial he shot for Bacardi, the UK’s most eccentric director
provides a refreshing dose of slightly bonkers idealism in an industry
that is, increasingly, dominated by hard-headed pragmatism.
