This is not a typical city spot

When you say Brno, you say detour

Anyone who has driven through Brno in summer knows the feeling. Detours, road closures, excavations. And then more detours and closures that often do not connect to each other at all.

It is a sore subject, and the anger of people in Brno has long been aimed at Brněnské komunikace – and, unfortunately, more and more often directly at their employees. One of the people who feels it the most is BKOM’s road-closure coordinator. He is the subject of the first in a series of PR spots within a campaign for better communication. One of its aims is to ease the insults and direct attacks that specific BKOM employees face.

Humour, but with restraint

Narrative Media, the agency that brought us in to produce the campaign’s three main spots, bet on a mix of humour and exaggeration.

The humour and exaggeration could not feel as if we were downplaying real problems or making fun of them.

Because the spots poked a bit of a hornet’s nest, the tone had to land precisely. The aim was above all to catch attention and draw people into a campaign that does not end with the spots themselves. They are followed by the educational parts of the campaign – a website, articles explaining what Brněnské komunikace actually do for Brno, and another series of educational videos.

It all started with testing

That is why Narrative Media, together with Leni Šremerová, who is behind the communication strategy and the video scripts, spent several months preparing and tuning the whole concept. Audience reactions to the finished concepts were then tested in advance with Behavio – with positive results.

We even had the exact emotion the actor was meant to play in each moment of the spot, and those reactions had been tested on users beforehand. Michal Isteník became the face of the whole campaign, and the role fitted him perfectly. Filming with him then went extremely smoothly.

Energy behind the camera too

We had the strategy, and we had the actor. Then it was our turn, and our director Adam Kotisa’s, to take the concept and give it a clear visual direction.

The script was fairly dynamic and full of tricks and surprises, so we decided the camera work had to match that pace. We used a lot of dolly moves and dynamic macro shots, which pushed the visuals even further and put the viewer right in the middle of it.

Iron pitchforks and more testing

Besides the dynamic camera work, the shoot brought a few other curiosities. Working with a live rabbit, a Brno crocodile toy that we later animated, and huge iron pitchforks that were meant to stick into a table.

The rabbit was fairly straightforward, but both the crocodile and the pitchfork throw were thoroughly tested in the months before the shoot, and we built a previsualisation of the whole spot. We use testing and visualisation as a strong tool before every larger shoot, so we know the tricks will work and the shots will fit together on set.

One boardroom instead of three locations

The spot was split into three parts – the coordinator’s office, a meeting room and a simple work room. Instead of a studio we chose a large boardroom at Brněnské komunikace headquarters, built the office set inside it, and simply rotated the whole set for each part of the spot.

That saved a huge amount of time and money, because we cut out the moves between locations and had the whole set ready the day before the shoot.

Red, black, white

For the colour of the whole spot we started from the client’s visual identity, which works with red, black and white. We then tuned the sets, props and wardrobe to those colours.

• Red

• Black

• White

We chose clean, very bright lighting, with a barely warm tint that gave the spot a gentler atmosphere. At the same time we kept enough contrast throughout, and with it the depth of the image, even with the lighter look.

A family atmosphere

The shoot itself then took a day and a half, and the atmosphere stayed extremely easy, even though we barely stopped, with a fairly large number of scenes. Thanks for that go to the client and to Narrative Media, who are genuinely great to work with.

And what did Brno think?

People in Brno received the finished spot fairly well. We of course expected the usual dose of haters on social media – and it arrived, as expected.

Médiář noticed the campaign too, and the spot placed third in their Reklamní katovna.