Off the rails

By Heather Jacobs

JULY 10, 2006 -- Ever stood on a train station and thought that the only excuse you’ll accept from the authorities for yet another train delay is a disruption caused by an alien invasion, a giant angry beaver, a destructive monster chicken or some Venus Fly Traps on the loose?

This is the humorous concept captured in a campaign by Leo Burnett Melbourne promoting a service for the state rail service, Connex, whereby commuters can register to be sent a free SMS informing them of delays.

Leo Burnett creative director, Jason Williams, who worked with art director Richard Walker and copywriter Andrew Woodhead on the campaign, said the agency believed using a more humorous approach would help soften the blow of everyday service delays.

“There’s really no better way to tackle a sensitive consumer issue than to make them laugh,” he said.

Walker said they went through quite a few scenarios, including using giant robots, before arriving at the six featured. Running across print, posters, outdoor, online and free postcards, it was photographed by Sydney-based Andreas Smetana.

The shoot took place over three days in Melbourne studio, chosen because it had an entire room devoted to the train track which they could use to shoot the model train sets.

Because they were shooting models, the challenge, according to Walker, was trying to get in close enough to capture all the action and detail in one shot.

“They were so tiny that the scene would shake and we would get a lot of distortion in the shot or the models of the little people would fall over. Things just didn’t seem to fit, the trains and the landscape were so small but the beaver was so massive that getting it to work was a really difficult thing to do,” Walker says.

The creatives had been looking forward to using Smetana on a shoot for a while, but this was the first time they had the budget to hire him.

“What he brought to the shoot was his absolute sense of detail. We knew from the very beginning that we were going to get the shot but there were a lot of secondary things in the shot and we spent ages talking with Andreas and the model maker working on the little details. For example, all the figures are hand molded so their arms and their heads are in different positions…Andreas was absolutely meticulous in capturing every detail,” Walker says.

Retouching took five and a half weeks because everything had to be placed in the shot individually. For example, the beaver was on its own background so each strand of fur had to be placed individually into the shot.

Feedback about the campaign has been positive, with requests for copies of the posters as souvenirs and a surge in the number of people registering for the service.