Martin Scorsese & Freixenet

I was in an agency earlier this week and mentioned this
entertaining idea for Freixenet to the creative director.
“We had an idea just like it,” he exclaimed, as if he’d been robbed.
The only trouble is his idea didn’t have a client to buy it whereas
somewhere in Spain, someone did say yes to the concept of Martin
Scorsese shooting the fragments of a Hitchcock movie script that
revolved, loosely, around a key and a bottle of cava. And it can’t
have been easy to buy, either.

For starters, Martin Scorsese wouldn’t have come cheap. And for
another thing, there are no guarantees that something like this will
actually work. Most clients rely on TV advertising because if you
take the size of the audiences and do various sums with the
number of times they will see the ad, then you can predict its
results. Which is a comfort.

Putting a film on the internet and hoping word of mouth will get
people to view it is altogether more risky.

So, whoever you are, Mr. Yes-Let’s-Run-With-It, I salute you for
briefing your agency to think differently and for then actually going
ahead with recommendation.

Coming just as 2007 is about to exit stage right, it is the year’s best
example of branded entertainment. I urge you to go
scorsesefilmfreixenet.com to view the whole 7-minute film.
Scorsese’s performance is terrific. I love his line, “We’re on a
mission”. And the filmic tributes to Hitchcock are a delight.
It’s tribute movie meets mockumentary meets advertising and it is
gloriously effervescent.

Will it win awards? I doubt it, because it doesn’t fit into any of the
categories of most awards shows. Still, I name the marketer who
inspired JWT Madrid to create this film The First Post’s Client of
the Year.

Someone, crack open a bottle of bubbly.

/Patrick Collister/