Aware of how often the setup has been used in advertising—CeraVe, Taco Bell and Tourism Australia, to name a few recent examples—creatives looked for ways to make the ad distinctive.
“We’ve seen this tactic a million times, and you can always tell it’s a fake trailer—all the signals are there that it’s a parody,” Lisagor said. “We needed this to feel real so people would think it’s plausibly a real movie.”
That approach reflects the brand’s DNA and the message it’s trying to get across, per Shevelenko.
“If you put something out there that’s a little ambiguous but enjoyable to watch, it should spark curiosity, which is core to our brand,” Shevelenko said. “If people ask questions like, ‘What did I just see?,’ then we’ll consider it a success.”
The spot’s entertainment value could lend itself to social shares and earned media, he said, which will be another yardstick to measure the campaign.
Iconic inspiration
The commercial, shot in two days in Nashville, Tenn., centers on a ragtag group of inventor-troublemakers that bands together for a common purpose. There is a main character who has fallen from grace and is itching for a comeback. Their goal is to beat the system for the betterment of society.
If all those elements sound like well-worn movie tropes, there’s a good reason for that. Lisagor used Perplexity as a “thought partner” to curate popular entertainment tropes and organize the threads of the story.
Sandwich worked with a frequent collaborator, filmmaker Seth Worley, as director, and Lisagor wrote the script with colleague Joshua Allen, with input from Perplexity. Inspiration included seminal projects like BMW Films and “1984,” for which “Apple hired Ridley Scott to make a trailer for a fake movie,” Lisagor said.
The agency, with a raft of tech clients, specializes in ads that speak to laymen, breaking down complicated products and services into everyday language. The work for Perplexity gave the team a new challenge and a “significantly high bar” to clear, per Lisagor.
Coming attractions
The partners are already working on more content, which will capture the spirit of “The Know-It Alls” but hop around in different genres with new scripts and characters. Meanwhile, “The Know-It Alls” has interest from two Hollywood studios with an eye to develop the original intellectual property as a film or series, Shevelenko said. (Creatives made up their own banner, Sonar Studios, for the ad and tagged the trailer with, “this film is not yet real,” a play on “this film is not yet rated,” in the end credits.)