Chivas: Here's to Big Bear

We’ve all been there at the end of the night bus route somewhere far, far away in the early hours of the morning having overslept on the way home, but what if you were on the wrong service altogether with no way back? Well that’s exactly the predicament a group of friends in Euro RSCG London’s new campaign for Chivas Regal find themselves in, before their saviour comes along in the form of a truck driver named Big Bear.

The campaign is far from your average advertising execution in that it doesn’t play out in 60, or even 90 seconds with a few bottle shots of the men sipping the beverage. The agency decided to approach the brief with an original idea to release a trailer promoting two short films featuring the men looking back and reminiscing on old times over a drink in a bar. And for creative director, Mick Mahoney, it was the ideal way to kick off the two-part series that celebrates male companionship for the brand.

“We literally started off with about 15-20 ideas,” he says. “We worked through and some of them weren’t practical from a production point of view. There were some that were rubbish and some that just wouldn’t have been right for the brand.”

The first film, Here’s to Big Bear, was filmed in the Atacama Desert, Chile, and sees the cast stranded without water, food or a phone signal, until they eventually reach a service station followed by Big Bear, who drives them out of the mess.

The second, Here’s to Twinkle, was shot in Santiago and takes the viewer back to the period when one of the guys, Sammy, was heartbroken and left in a deep depression by a bad break-up only for the rest of the group to attempt to snap him out of it with a host of ‘fun’ activities. In the end, however, it’s a dog named Twinkle (and ultimately its owner) that comes to his rescue.

Having a good relationship with the client was great for the creative process, says Mahoney, but getting the right director on board was just as important: “We were talking to a few directors at the time and had about four on the table. We had access to really good people but we started working with Joachim Back and he loved the scripts from the get-go.”

“What he does is really cinematic and beautiful but also humorous and often you don’t find that striking combination,” explains Mahoney. “He’s a really interesting character and he was really into it, even calling up in the middle of the night to suggest things.”

Mahoney and the team had all placed bets about how long the films would run for and the general feeling was that Big Bear and Twinkle would be eight and four minutes in duration respectively. But when Russell Icke, editor on the job, revealed they’d be 14 and eight minutes, Mahoney couldn’t believe it: “I honestly thought he was joking. But it’s only ever too long if it’s not interesting. The content is tight and we tried to keep it that way.”

Casting was also understandably an important part and there had to be chemistry with the four men who would play Sammy, Joe, Nicolas and Emilio. The agency had originally wanted actors from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) to play the roles, but ended up with two from the UK and two from the States, after holding casting sessions in New York, Los Angeles and London.

“Joachim was pushing them and pushing them and they were all relying on each other. It was a whole new level of acting,” adds Mahoney, “They’ve all ended up mates and I think they’ve all been on holiday since.”

The films are currently showing at the dedicated website, chivas.com, as well as on the brand’s Facebook and YouTube channels. There’s also an immersive instalment to come with fans soon being able to construct their own unique stories.