Gilbert’s Sausages
“Meet Gilbert & Tasty”
Challenge:
Gilbert’s Craft Sausages and their agency, Haberman, wanted to craft a friendly, accessible image for their product. Gone are the trappings of other meat brands: no black labeling, bold text, and images of flames. In its place is a fun, colorful, fresh & friendly brand. Gilbert’s needed to introduce their brand to the world in a way their brand attributes.
Solve:
The spots were originally intended to run without audio — just puppets living their best lives. Director LJ Johnson used her deep casting experience to propose a new option: we would find VO actors with experience in improv and give them the space and direction they needed to add personality to the puppets. LJ was able to remotely cast VO artists, developing an improv framework, and work through Zoom sessions to bring together cast, client, and agency for an improv-heavy VO session.
Once the VO was developed and recorded, the in-studio shoot (w/ full COVID safety protocols) allowed the puppeteers to “act out” the dialogue that had already been recorded. We were able to film 3 spots plus stills during a 2-day shoot using custom puppets designed and constructed specifically for the brand.
Our solve was to script and animate two videos in the style of an animated podcast interview (shout out to Radiolab). One is targeted at nurses, the other is targeted at hospital administrators. We wanted to keep the tone poppy, fresh, and focused on end-user benefits on all sides.
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The team at Current Resident were fantastic collaborative creative partners through and through. It was pure joy to witness LJ direct improv comedy actors as they brought voice to two sausage loving jazz playing puppet pals.
– Mim Epstein, Agency Producer, Haberman
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Saxophone
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Let’s Make a Commercial
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Funny Words
Crew
Agency
Haberman
Director
LJ Johnson
Producer
Rachel Nyberg
DP
Kellen Witschen
Talent
Kellen Witschen
AD
John Wildauer
Gaffer
Sam Mayhew
AC
Hannah Germaine
Production Designer
Sarah Jean Shervin
Editor
Bud Hjelmberg
Post Audio
Greyghost Studios
Color
Chaddix Malchow
COVID Officer
Zoe Esser
