Detroit agency Farley Oil and generative-first production company Smoke&Oakum built a campaign for Michigan craft distillery Valentine Distilling’s Mayor Pingree bourbon around the line “Smoother Than You Expect,” aimed at one of whiskey advertising’s most familiar claims. The central spot, “Natatorium,” follows a broad, heavy-set man climbing to the top of a diving platform and leaping in without a splash. Director Adam Witten credits the idea to Farley Oil CCO Grey Farley: “It arrived as a sentence, an idea he wanted to explore. Most brilliant ideas are a sentence long.”
Regional distillers compete for attention against much larger marketing budgets, and the spot was made without a physical shoot for that reason. “Priced traditionally, that world is a location you cannot find, a build you cannot afford, and a schedule Valentine had no reason to fund for a 30-second ad,” Witten says. “The budget wouldn’t have killed the idea. The idea would never have been brought to them in the first place. So we built it generatively and spent the money where you feel it.”
Where it went was craft. Smoke&Oakum works with sound designers, composers, mixers, colourists and post professionals alongside generative artists, and retains DPs as consultants. The product itself was shot practically, by Kevin Derda. Wardrobe, lens, frame height, edit and sound stayed with people. Witten likens the model’s output to an actor’s takes — it gives you 25 and you choose — which makes refusal part of the job. Asked for a “beast of a man,” the model returned “something almost amphibian,” a caricature that “just made you laugh at him instead of with him.” It kept offering that version back, and the team started from scratch several times before the right dude was cast.
“Our process is generative. Our output isn’t necessarily,” Witten says. “If a project is better served by a camera, it gets a camera.”
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