Last night, BCM picked up some hard earned plastic-wear on ‘The Pitch’ segment of The Gruen Transfer. We were up against Gatecrasher from W.A, and the battle ended in a rare 2-2 draw, so both agencies went home happy with a trophy in hand. Having said that, we were thrilled to secure Todd’s vote on the night, considering he is clearly the brains trust on the pitch panel!

The task, in case you weren’t watching, was to “Convince the IOC that it’s not too late to switch the host for the 2012 Olympics from London to Australia.” A fairly tricky brief even by Gruen standards. Nevertheless, the challenge sparked vigorous brainstorming in all corners of the agency, followed by a week of panic-station production! Alas, we got there in the end.

So how did we cull a banquet of ideas down to a 48 second video clip? And what concepts died in the process?

Well, we certainly weren’t short of initial thoughts (some great, some average, some not fit for broadcast.) We conceived and considered everything from doing a Bin Laden style threat video, to piggybacking the global recession, picking on pom’s bad teeth, leveraging crap London weather, exploiting Princess Mary of Denmark, bribing IOC delegate’s wives with sexy Aussie hunks and more. Man it was fun!

As it turned out we got to a shortlist of four concepts, which we soon culled down a two horse race. One was the ‘Doomsday’ idea we ended up pitching, the other was built around doing a PR job convincing the world that the Poms just don’t WANT the games!

Ultimately, we chose the Doomsday idea as we felt it was more original, more insightful, and more ‘do-able’, given the time and resources we had available. Actually, it was rather surprising seeing just how ‘legit’ all video content had to be for Gruen pitches. Unlike normal agency Pitch videos where you pillage any images you want, this stuff had to be bonafide! That came neither easy nor cheap, but I guess every agency was in the same boat.

So, that was that. We agreed on a concept script, it was quickly approved by Mr.Denton’s crew at Zapruder, and we promptly went to work bringing our video to life. We enlisted Gerard Lambkin and Damian Tiernon from Zoom to help shoot a few clips with ‘star-talent’ from the agency, shot a scene ourselves using a ‘whinging pom’ in account service, and the rest was down to stock footage magic. (Sorry if I just gave away any trade secrets!)

Soon enough I had the ‘pleasure’ of being coated in man make-up and pitching the idea in front of an ABC studio audience, while a handful of my workmates sat in the green room sipping beers and eating crackers. My fears were soon confirmed. It’s much more comfy being on the ‘filming’ side of the camera, than the ‘filmed’ side of the camera!

Check out these related posts:

1. BCM appearing on The Gruen Transfer, Wednesday night!
2. ‘The Pitch’ on GRUEN