One Cowboy Commercial, Comin' Right Up

Kathryn recently wrote a gushing piece about the creative freedom we've enjoyed in promoting Boerne Wild West Day, and I'm not one to necessarily argue with her assessment. Being given a blank slate can be liberating. Two weeks ago, the opportunities seemed to increase beyond belief, as GVTC, a local cable carrier, offered an in-kind donation of airtime to the festival.

The catch? After looking at their deadline and our calendar, I realized I'd have roughly three days of production time, from concept to wrap. That's just a wee bit under industry average; suddenly, that blank slate was looming over my head, threatening to brain me. Still, I had a couple of aces up my sleeve:

• Some outstanding artistic groundwork established by Digett intern Robert Kuykendall and Digett designer Andrew McClintock. (See it in action.) Their HDR photography served as inspiration and backdrop for the commercial.
• The increasing availability of quality stock footage. In most cases, we advocate taking your own shots. In a pinch, however, background stock can be used to great effect.
• The generosity of Enchanted Springs Ranch, host of Boerne Wild West Day. They provided tons of still photos and even some of their own commercial footage.

The first step was stitching the first two together and setting the stage for the commercial to "come alive" in the same way the festival is animating cowboy culture, as the stills below demonstrate:

That helped kick things off on the right foot and established the tone for the entire commercial. From there, it was simply a matter of looking at the visuals provided by Enchated Springs Ranch, as well as those we created, and selecting which elements we wanted to promote. Like every other part of our marketing mix, the goal was to attract people of all ages—something that's pretty easy when you're talking about shootin', rustlin', and ropin'.

Sourcing audio elements also was a challenge, given the deadline. In this case, we were lucky to have nearby voice talent that fit the tone perfectly, and Andrew even found us some action-inspiring Western music for background. The results, we hope, will serve to bring people out on October 24 for some real cowboy fun. The ad is running on GVTC cable.