MACY'S SAY YES VIRGINIA

JWT and The Ebeling Group have teamed up to turn the classic story of a little girl's search for hope into a heart-warming holiday animation for Macy's.

Set to air on December 11 on CBS, Yes Virginia builds on the Believe campaign launched by JWT last year, which saw the American department store-cum-cultural icon Macy's partnering with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. With their foot firmly in the events and entertainment realm thanks to their legendary Thanks Giving Day Parade and Fourth of July Fireworks, the stage is set for Macy's to enter the branded content sphere with their half-hour Bitstate-directed special.

The show is based around the true story of Virginia O'Hanlon who, in 1897, sent an open letter to the New York Sun asking if there really was a Santa Claus, and the now-famous editorial response written by Francis Church.

"Last year our Believe campaign pledged to donate a dollar to the Make-A-Wish Foundation for every letter to Santa that was posted in store at Macy's," explains JWT ECD Wayne Best. "We needed a TV spot to promote the initiative so we used the Yes Virginia article that Francis Church had written as the basis for that. One of the board members at Macy's asked if anyone really knew the story, to which Matt [MacDonald, JWT creative director] responded by suggesting we could expand the campaign into something much larger and create a short animation explaining who Virginia was."

The initial plan was for a three minute web film, but after a successful pitch in January the project snowballed into a 30 minute TV special, and with the green light to proceed and the countdown to the holidays under way, it was up to TEG producer Kallan Kagan to pull out all the stops.

"The biggest differences between this project and a 'traditional' TV spot came in terms of the above the line production structure," she explains. "We had a client, a TV network and an agency involved so there were a lot of cooks in our kitchen. We had an extraordinarily expedited timeline for production too, so there was very little margin of error from the beginning. We were really fortunate in the sense that the agency never overstepped their bounds to over-manage processes because they trusted us and that meant everything could run that bit smoother."

Working closely with the creative team at Macy's, Bitstate's Pete Circuitt and animation company Starz began to develop the story and characters, crafting the visual landscape in which to set Virginia's journey.

"My initial treatment latched on to the core principals of what we wanted to do very quickly," says Circuitt. "The goal was to tell a story of great beauty that had the idea of hope at its core. In terms of its tone it's definitely different to a lot of the other Christmas stories that are being told. At the time it was being written the credit crunch was in full force and there was a general feeling of turmoil going on so some of the conversations we had involved thinking of ways we could intertwine that within the story. The hearts and souls of New Yorkers are slightly broken through the film and Virginia's journey turns that around."

For MacDonald, the process of brining Virginia's tale to the small screen was all about creative collaboration and trust. "Pete was great at pushing us on with the story," he reveals. "On the surface of it we've got these characters that on first glance might seem quite dark. Scraggly Santa's a good example - he's a guy who looks almost homeless and collects money for the poor on the streets of New York, so he's not obviously meant for a children's story. But Pete was always there saying he was the best character in the show and we had to hang on to him."

The animated show is definitely on trend when it comes to the more gritty turn taken recently by traditionally twee and cutsey animation studios like Disney and Pixar, with projects such as A Christmas Carol, Up and Coraline.

"There's enough grittiness to make you understand that this is a city that didn't believe, but then the characters are so beautiful and so endearing that there's nothing frightening about it," explains MacDonald.

"You couldn't have built too much of a dark tale around the character of Virginia - she's too sweet," adds ECD Best. "You need that contrast and tension between her and the rest of the world, and you need her to be the guiding light in a way. The contrast between the dark and disheartened city plays really nicely against her brightness and her personality, and creates something that feels uplifting without being cheesy. We're really excited to have been able to work on a project like this."