Challenge
A promo for Twitter’s 2020 Valentine’s Day campaign. Phil Wang brings you some of twitter’s best dating tips… sort of. A bloke on a badly-keyed green screen riding CGI horses whilst poorly delivering a swathe of dating faux-pas. Y’know, when briefs come along that allow us to spill out ideas like that, that’s when you know one of two things. Either: You’re respected as creative leaders in the field of filmmaking and video production; or You’ve grossly misread the room and your childhood fantasies of being paid to do stuff like this really needs to end. After careful consideration, there’s very likely a middle ground within that where we tread, but somehow, we convinced both creative agency Flying Object and Twitter to get on-board with the idea and ride that train. Twitter is the leading source of deep and relatable shower thoughts—those ideas or pieces of commentary on life itself you often come across during those oft-rare pauses in our days, like taking a shower or waiting for the bus. The concept revolved around how “traditional” dating advice ties in with unrealistic expectations of love and dating—juxtaposed with real Tweets of what dating life is really like—focusing on the harsh realities that we’ve all faced at some point in our search for love.
Solution
Our initial research into meme culture and terrible romance-themed visuals was less like work and more like succumbing to one of those intense meme binges and having an existential crisis… And of course, there were a ton of tweets that we adored but never made the cut: We found a love of awfully mismatched backgrounds, unrealistically-sized, superimposed props and WordArt-inspired text to really hit home the feeling as if the video wasn’t really thought-through, a bit of a rushed job, and had a vibe that really made you question who made it, why it was made and why it even exists at all. Making something look purposefully crap is sometimes harder than making something look great. With the weird and wonderful stage set, we drafted in comedian Phil Wang to front the piece. His mixture of deadpan delivery and kind, warm face had that perfect combination to result in an endearing and pseudo-realistic performance.
Results
Getting to work on projects like this is the stuff we all love, so it was an ace one to deliver for an absolutely lovely bunch of people at both Flying Object and Twitter. Amassing over 7 million views in a few days was pretty sick, too. P.S. There are four horses in the video. Two are obvious. Two are not. Good luck.
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