Into the Library with Eric Kallman
Eric Kallman helped shape one of the most famous modern advertising campaigns of all time with Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’, a piece of work that sold a lot of bodywash, but also spared a reset for comedic advertising. At the time, he was a creative at Wieden+Kennedy Portland, having started his career as a copywriter at TBWA\Chiat\Day New York.
He later became a founding executive creative director at Barton F. Graf 9000, before moving to Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. In 2016, he teamed up with business partner Steven Erich to launch Erich & Kallman – a lean, idea-first independent business.
To us, Eric’s career is shaped by a constant: making work that people actually enjoy consuming. To find out more about how much of it came to be, LBB’s Addison Capper caught up with him for this edition of our Into the Library series.
Skittles – ‘Stable’ and ‘Touch’
The Skittles shoot for the campaign spots ‘Touch’ and ‘Stable’ was the first shoot that my partner and I were allowed to cover on our own, which is a nerve wracking experience in and of itself. And while the spots turned out great, everything that could have gone wrong on that shoot did.
A very long story short: the actor in ‘Stable’ – who had his prosthetic utters milked in the spot – had a UTI and hadn’t seen a doctor even after days of pain. When he keeled over during the first take of the morning, we sent a production assistant with a bunch of cash to the nearest hospital – hours away. A doctor eventually came and gave him a catheter on set. (He was still mic’d up during this, to the amusement of some in the sound department.) We shot the second take about 12 hours later and ended up shooting the entire thing overnight.
The next day, shooting ‘Touch’, there was just as much drama around some in-camera effects that weren’t working but… More importantly, did you know the young woman at the beginning of ‘Touch’ is Flo from Progressive? Skittles ‘Touch’ was her first commercial. Big time commercial trivia right there.
Careerbuilder – ‘Tips’
I feel like this spot still holds up. The sad part is there were two other spots in this campaign that were just as good and just as epic, but they never saw the light of day. The economic crash of 2008 killed all Careerbuilder.com advertising spending overnight. This spot only ran once, during the Super Bowl, because the client had already bought the airtime. Thank goodness it got out into the world.
At first, the koala that got punched in the face was a penguin that got punted. We kept getting pushback from PETA and had changed the vignette a bunch of times with no success so we finally got on the phone with them. We said it’ll be a puppet koala, they said, “What if it looks too lifelike?” Frustrated, we finally blurted out “It’ll wear glasses, and speak with a British accent.” That somehow did the trick.
Advertising used to be more fun.
Old Spice – ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’
This is the spot that should have never been made. P&G spends so much on advertising they got a free 30 seconds during the Super Bowl about a month before the game. Their plan was to use it to sell the warehouse full of body wash they had sitting around, and then sell the Old Spice brand. A couple months later the brand was the category leader.
When asked why the spot turned out so good, my partner had the best answer: “Nobody had time to screw it up.” We wrote it in a couple days, casting was on Christmas Eve and barely anyone showed up. At the end of our second and final day of shooting we still didn’t have the one take we needed, then one lucky raincloud rolled in and got us the weather insurance day we needed to get the spot completed. The clients hated the end result and pulled it from the Super Bowl. I believe Dan Wieden himself argued to keep the rest of the media buy and the spot was so immediately loved when it started airing right after the game that it won some Super Bowl polls without ever being an official Super Bowl ad.
Old Spice – ‘Terry Crews’
The brief right after ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ was for a powerful odour-killing body wash for teenage boys. We originally tried to cast charismatic bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman to be the muscle-bound screaming guy in the red speedo. (If you don’t know him, look him up! “Yeah buddy!”)
When we couldn’t secure him we ended up with Terry Crews, and the rest is history. The brand is still using both the Isaiah Mustafa and Terry Crews characters today.
Coca Cola – Border
I feel like this Super Bowl spot we did for Coca-Cola is underrated and never got the attention it deserved.
We also shot it at the end of the kinda-wasteful-but-really-fun era of production. We did some casting in London where we found the guy with the slighter build, one of the better Shakespierian actors in England. Then we took the train to Paris for some more casting where we found the bigger guy, apparently the ‘Jim Carrey of France’, we were told. Then we flew over to Morocco and shot for a week in the middle of the desert (not far from the old Star Wars and Gladiator sets). We recorded the score in LA with a live symphony.
Today this would be a one day non-union shoot in Fresno and the score would be put together by a guy with a keyboard. Times have changed.
Kayak.com – Brain Surgery
I’ve gotten to make hundreds of funny TV commercials with great creative partners. If I had to pick one that ‘nailed it’ the best it might be this one. The premise is wonderfully insane. The dialogue is lovably campy. And the end joke with the pointing and the high-five might be my gag-writing magnum opus. Enjoy.
Ragu – Long Day of Childhood
I’ve done a lot of advertising with songs and spokespeople. Back in the day, advertising used to be mostly all songs and spokespeople for a reason. It’s the most simple and memorable way to communicate a message.
Anywho, out of all the song campaigns I’ve gotten to be a part of, this one is the best because the insight is the best. The creative department had some time on this brief (very rare today, I know) and the first thing we did was have teams write campaign insights. Not campaign ideas, but rather one-paragraph ideas about a way in.
The team on this one nailed it with the idea that being a kid isn’t awesome, it actually sucks. School is like prison. Adults tell you exactly where you have to be and what you have to do all day long. You don’t even get to choose what you eat. So, ‘after a hard day of childhood’, give your kids Ragu.
The idea was to make it like old ‘70s beer ads. Like, after a long day chopping wood or working in the mines, crack open a cold one. The song’s structure allows for the perfect two-line premise to make each spot different and fun before diving into the chorus.
If you haven’t heard the radio spot for this campaign it’s even better than the TV ads; look it up!
Little Caesars – :15s
I’ve been told my work is really simple, which is probably why I love :15s. When I started on Little Caesars they already had a six-second product shot and end treatment filmed that they wanted to use at the end of the spots, so we only had the first nine seconds of the :15s to write for. Usually, with :15s, you have about 12 seconds for your story, so 25% less was a real challenge. I think that tightening ultimately is what made the work so great. You only had time for your message and the joke. So we wrote until we had a really, really good one.
Reese’s Puffs – Prom Dress
After doing this job for a couple of decades it can get pretty repetitive. I have a theory that there are only about 12 different briefs in advertising (the fastest, the smartest, etc.) And one of the most challenging recurring briefs is ‘craveable’. Writing a great creative campaign around the obtuse idea that ‘our food tastes really good and people really want it’ can be a tough nut to crack. This construct nailed it, and this execution in particular did, too.
Auto Glass Now – Forgot
The amount of overthinking in advertising is nuts. I always tell creatives to dig lots of shallow holes, because the solution is never that far away. Case in point, this campaign for a windshield repair company. What service do they provide? New windshields. What would life be like without them? I guess…no windshields? That reminded me of pictures and videos I’ve seen of people’s faces getting blown away by a leafblower. Sometimes the first idea is the best one.
Reese’s – Yes
People who love Reese’s really LOVE Reese’s (Yea!!!). And those people get really mad at the idea of anyone changing what they love (Boo!!!). With this simple insight at its core, this Super Bowl spot was a hit for The Hershey Company.
But the insight is only a part of what led to the script. Lots of times the literal rules around what a brand can show or say helps you come up with the creative idea. Reese’s advertising, as we all know, is always mouthwatering closeups on an orange background. We knew we had to include these closeups throughout any spot Reese’s would consider, and we ended up landing on a back-and-forth construct that treated the product closeups like the star that they are while adding maximum humour and memorability.
