SARSI, ANGAT SA IBA,
1989 Creative Guild TV Ad of the Year
“Big, brown & beautiful…”
The stunning 1989 ad of the year remains an industry classic
and epitomized the kind of assignment that every creative person dreams of one
day finding in his pigeonhole.”That was a fluke,” declares Nonoy Gallardo,
former basic/FCB executive director and now, president of Creative Partners.
“Our clients gave us complete freedom, it was a new
situation, and we were experimenting with a new sound. Serendipity talaga.
There will never be another account like that again”
The account was Cosmos Bottling Corporation, an old
softdrink manufacturer with such an image problem, Gallardo recalls, citing the
mountains of research conducted by Basic/FCB in preparation for the five-agency
bid, that store owners were actually ashamed to carry the brand. “All they
remember was the SARSI with egg. The brand needed a complete overhaul.”
The overhaul began when Cosmos was newly acquired by the
Concepcions, who wanted it relaunched in a big way. “Suddenly,” recalls the SARSI copywriter and now Jimenez/DMB&B creative director Teddy
Catuira,”there was this brand with a heritage, but with very poor
communications that wanted to go against the giants.”
It was decided early on, Catuira says, that music would be
the main weapon of choice. “What better way did you have of reaching the
youth?” explains Gallardo. “But if we came up with a typical Top 40s song, luma
kami sa Coke and Pepsi.”
Serendipity proved to be the savior because, at the same
time, Katha, the organization of songwriters of which Gallardo is an active
member, had been toying around with the concept of genuinely Filipino music,
searching for an amalgam of influences and northern and southern rhythms that could be considered
distinctively Pinoy. They called it “Brown Music,” and Gallardo and his
collaborator, composer Ryan Cayabyab, suddenly found themselves with a perfect
venue for experimentation. “We took Ryan and his keyboard to the presentation.”
Gallardo laughs,”and we lectured the client about the lack of dictinctiveness
of Filipino music.”
Soon, a series of commercial heralding the advent of the
“Bagong Tunog” was in the works, featuring independent ads that gave unique
personalities to SARSI, Cheers and Pop Colas as Basic/FCB plunged into a flurry
of activity. The Creative Guild chose SARSI’s “Angat sa Iba” 45 seconder
as the TV Ad of the Year.
The
SARSI material, Catuira says, was written in a
flash---as in, about 10 minutes before Cayabyab had to put the words to music.
With
SARSI being “neither here nor there, east meets west,” as Catuira explains
it, it was the angle of versatile superiority that ultimately drove the ad.
WATCH SARSI "Angat sa Iba" TVC here:
Director Jeric Soriano, art director Egay Oliva and the
whole creative team “poured on the creativity,” Gallardo recounts, and holed up
in a studio to shoot what became a colorful celebration of departure from the
norm.
Swimmers and dancers leapt
joyously out of acrowd of carbon copies, while precision dancers and
kabuki masks provide the uniform assembly-line backdrop for the welcome
upstarts. The proposition was simple and
not too presumptuous: try this product if you’re tired of the obvious two-faced
big brand monopoly—just for a change.
“Ganoon nga ba talaga?” the a capella beginning chorus
questioned, “pare-pareho na lang ba?” before thumping into a vibrant and
triumphant “Mag-SARSI ka para ma-iba!’ It was definitely high-gloss softdrink
advertising, with a strong Filipino heart, and the audience could tell the
difference immediately.
The timing was also perfect, Catuira recalls, as “there was
still this post-EDSA hype about being Filipino.” This “upsurge of nationalism.” Gallardo adds,
filtered out to the rest of the industry, as other agencies and production
houses cheered the team on.”Everyone was excited and everybody saw it as an
industry accomplishment. They wanted to show the Hong Kong people that we were
just as good at production as anybody else.
SARSI skyrocketed back into the national consciousness,
reappearing in restaurants and stores. The erstwhile snooty storeowners were
begiing dealers for cases of the “Bagong Tunog” softdrinks. And, Gallardo
claims, the ad remains a reference for the creative advertising that did its
job very well.
CREDITS:
AGENCY: Basic/ FCB
ADVERTISER: Cosmos Bottling Corporation
PRODUCT: Sarsi
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Nonoy Gallardo
COPYWRITER: Teddy Catuira
ART DIRECTOR: Egay Oliva
PRODUCERS: Mario Sarmiento, Roby Ablen
DIRECTOR: Jeric Soriano
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Rody Lacap
PRODUCTION HOUSE: Production Village
Source:
PERFECT 10: A Decade of Creativity in Philippine
Advertising, published by the Executive Committee of the Creative Guild of the
Philippines, an affiliate of the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies
of the Philippines. Manila, 1995
