shots 20th: 2001 - Agents of the viral revolution

In 2001 the internet was well established, but the day of the viral was still to come. Put in the mix one diminutive Aussie, a purveyor of sexy knickers, director Steve Reeves and an imaginative script and you have the recipe for inbox meltdown, says Danny Edwards

While the internet was well established by 2001 the notion of viral advertising was still very much in its infancy.

Bandwidth was an issue but also the simple idea that an audience could appropriate a spot and pass it onto their friends who would in turn pass it onto their friends had yet to be truly grasped in the virtual world. There were those, like the Viral Factory which was founded in 2001, who had seen the future and knew which way it was heading, but there’s one commercial which heralded the advent of viral communication and it featured Kylie Minogue in her pants.

Well, in Agent Provocateur’s pants to be precise. But it was this commercial which paved the way for a whole host of sexy, funny or just downright odd spots that clogged up inboxes for most of the noughties. Directed by Another Film Company’s Steve Reeves through CDP London, Proof became an internet sensation even though it started life as a cinema ad.

The initial idea for the spot didn’t actually include the diminutive Aussie songstress at all, as Reeves explains: “It was going to be an unknown model and we did a casting session, which was very interesting,” he laughs. “I think someone at CDP’s got that casting tape now and won’t give it back! Anyway, then Kylie was mentioned and because I’d done a Eurostar ad with her, she was approached and when we met her she was really cool about it.”

The initial script set the action in an old manor house but Reeves wanted something more surreal and liked the idea of some sort of sleazy boudoir.

Something else that wasn’t originally in the script was the white-haired old lady who bookends the film and adds another touch of surrealism to the ad. “Because Kylie’s so pretty and sexy, how do you make her look more sexy?” says Reeves.

“So I thought we should put her next to someone who’s not sexy at all. And we got this old woman in and the creative team were brilliant because they weren’t sure about it but said, ‘let’s film it – we can take it out of the cut if we want to’.”

Slathering her in make-up to make her look like a bordello madam, Kylie simply walked on set and was asked if she could writhe around with the old lady. “And she just went for it and basically lap danced for this old lady,” smiles Reeves. “It was just an idea that I thought may or may not work and luckily for us it did.”

Indeed, it seems that Miss Minogue’s inhibitions were pretty much non-existent during the course of the shoot and she embraced the project with gusto. “She just went for it straight away. We had all these privacy curtains but she was like, ‘don’t worry about it’. She got blisters on her hands from riding the bucking bronco and she was absolutely exhausted. But yeah, everyone was watching and she didn’t mind at all, we just put some Daft Punk on and she went for it.”

You can tell that the internet was in the first throws of its YouTube evolution in 2001 because once the ad appeared, salivating punters were still after hard copies of the spot before digital delivery became the norm.

“There was a guy from Deutsche Bank who phoned up and wanted to know how much it would be to buy 10 copies of the video,” says Reeves, shaking his head in wonderment, “and could we courier them over to the US.”

Proof became an internet darling and email inboxes were bombarded with lo-res QuickTimes of the ad accompanied by the now ubiquitous NSFW acronym.

“I’ve no idea how it went so viral,” says Reeves. “I presume either the client or the agency stuck it on the internet and it went from there because it wasn’t [Another]. I don’t think it would be such a big deal now but back then it was huge.

It’s amazing how it’s changed in such a short time.” Proof remains one of the most downloaded and viewed spots on the internet and was even voted the greatest cult cinema ad of all time in a British poll from 2009.

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