If you go to the movies in the Fort Wayne area and you arrive early, you might just see some of our recent work for 3Rivers. OLG partnered alongside the credit union to create a 30-second spot for the 18-25 crowd to promote the benefits of their Young & Free Program.
Young & Free is an initiative developed to inform Gen Y’ers of how a credit union can be more suited for them than “big banks.” To make each region unique, Y&F suggests the use of a local spokesperson. In our case, Matt Mills—a local college student—fills that role. Even though Matt has made himself known online and in the community, we still believed it necessary to introduce Matt to any that were unfamiliar with his message.
We knew we’d end up with Matt talking directly to the camera but we made it a point to look at other ways to visually change it up. The favorite idea was to get him interacting with the studio space. We thought, “Matt is always active—running here, running there—making his own video clips. What if we made it look like this commercial shoot is a continuation of his spokesperson role?” So basically we’re giving the approachable guy a way to still seem “real” by not hiding what we’re doing.
The beginning shot of Matt arriving in the branded Fit is made to look like it’s in the backlot of the studio, however we liked the aesthetics of a downtown alleyway instead. Next, we moved to Punch’s in-studio green screen where we staged the “run-in.” The orange animation happening behind Matt is on-brand with our other 3Rivers spots but we decided to keep with the interactivity by initiating the faux switch. The last, nice touch was adding in a couple of custom icons of the laptop and phone.
In the end, I think we ended up with a great spot for the theater that’s not too over-the-top and says what it needs to say. And keep an eye out, you may be seeing more of Matt in the near future—say hi! You just may be a Y&F candidate.
