Advertising Diaries: RLD Goes Roadtrippin’

In our effort to take you inside the lives of our employees and their work, we assigned two of our ad wizards – Samantha Ankeny and Jamie McCarthy – to send us missives from the road as they watched our new commercial campaign being shot. You’ll start seeing their work this weekend on TV, in print and on the Web (some have already come out that you can see here)…stay tuned for more. For more details on the overall campaign, we’ve put some of the press release after the jump.

The Dodge Diaries: Tales from an Ad Campaign

By Samanta Ankeny and Jamie McCarthy

August 7

The Brand shoot is still going well. Sunday we shot at the Ranch - Ram 3500, 2500, 1500. We captured a great group shot of the trucks, trucks working and towing and lots of cattle.

Monday we shot Durango at the Marina - the truck looks great! Cute family. We dressed them down a bit since we were a bit concerned the mom and dad were overdressed.

Monday afternoon was dedicated to Dakota. Fantastic location - absolutely stunning. Tons of great footage.

Today we are shooting Charger all day. We are atop Mount Tam - beautiful location. Definitely not too dry, brown - very green, lush golden grass. Crew is getting ready to leave for car-to-car shooting.

Tomorrow we are off to Placerville to shooting the logging vignette on Thursday. We then travel up to Salt Lake City for our last day of shooting at the mine.

–Samantha

August 10

We just landed in Utah. Wanted all to know, as the current mine situation unfolds, that production has been in contact with the Sulfco mine, where we are shooting, on a daily basis. The mine company still wants to move forward with the shoot and is excited to have us on site.

Yesterday we shot some awesome logging footage of the Power Wagon. The location was nothing short of spectacular – a mountain top just outside Lake Tahoe (I have had to endure some really scary mountain road drives on this shoot!). We captured mud, rocks, and chains (saws) and the badge.

Signing off from Utah,

–Samantha

August 12

The Brand team has made it home safe and sound after a long and well traveled, but exciting, brand shoot.

The footage is awesome! The Mining shoot was really cool. Arch Coal - the parent company of the mine where we shot and their representative on the ground were very, very accommodating and excited to have us on site. Jamie, Tom and I were taken down into the mine about a 1/4-1/2 mile in a Ram pickup truck. I have a whole new appreciation for miners and what their job entails. I’ll let Jamie tell you about my extreme case of claustrophobia…

The last of the footage is being processed this week. Our editor arrives in Detroit on Monday 8/20 to begin working with Tom and Jamie on the process of choosing the selects and editing the rough cut.

See you all on the 15th.

–Samantha

August 13

Coal mine was really quite cool. Samantha was a trooper to go way into the mine with us…my arm is still sore from her squeezing it and saying, “get me the $!@# out of here!”. Being as evil as I am I told the driver to keep going….

Those miners were very smart and enjoyed helping us out. They looked great.

–Jamie

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As you can tell, there’s quite a bit of variety in the new campaign. Want to know more? Here’s part of the press release:

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Through a celebration of moms and families, the Dodge brand is launching the newest version of America’s best-selling minivan, the all-new 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan, with a new campaign that showcases its interior flexibility, including the innovative Swivel ‘n Go™, through industry-leading communications techniques.

As a new approach to reach consumers with the right message, the Dodge brand is the first in the industry to utilize Yahoo! Smart Ads for a new vehicle launch. Yahoo! Smart Ads combines behavioral targeting and dynamically generated advertisements as part of an integrated marketing campaign to launch the all-new 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan.

Dodge Grand Caravan TV Spot Descriptions

The first spot, Family Reunion, shows how the all-new Grand Caravan can help bring a disconnected family together and help them bond. We see them exploring the interior and enjoying the journey, so much so that the family’s adventure continues beyond the commercial’s completion.

Another spot, Rooms, was meant to convey the all-new Grand Caravan as a “family room on wheels,” but is so much more. The commercial shows not only a litany of product features, but exhibits the emotional connection that exists between a family and the Grand Caravan.

The third spot, Be Right Back, is designed to demonstrate a key, exclusive feature—SIRIUS™ Backseat TV. The commercial leverages Dodge’s partnership with Nickelodeon, one of the three Backseat TV networks (along with Disney Channel and Cartoon Network), and its highly-popular character, SpongeBob SquarePants. The commercial demonstrates that not only can you watch SpongeBob at home, but because Grand Caravan’s SIRIUS programming is live 24/7, you can take SpongeBob with you.

The final spot, Crash Test Kid, utilizes a crash test dummy as part of the family within the spot to exhibit how integral safety was to the Grand Caravan’s design process.

Dodge Brand TV Spot Description

The 2008 model year Dodge Brand Campaign, “Make the Most of Every Mile”, is constructed from vignettes and/or mini-stories shot for each of the brand’s nameplates. The high-energy footage shows products in action and real people interacting with vehicles. The overall tonality of the footage is optimistic, bold, confident, strong, and clever.

Both the multi-car and Ram truck 30-second spots drill deeper into the product story and will launch shortly after the 60-second brand spot.

In addition, the Dodge logo is redesigned to have a more three-dimensional look which reflects the actual vehicle badge, and gives it a more contemporary image in the advertising.

The new Dodge brand and Dodge Grand Caravan campaigns were created by the Detroit office of BBDO, which is part of the Omnicom entity and located in Troy, Mich.