Progressive Insurance - Stand Out

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Creators of the iconic brand concept for Progressive Insurance, agency Arnold came to us to produce a series of striking ads featuring the loveable store employee ‘Flo’ throughout two huge print campaigns.

After shooting the first, which included lots of bunnies and marshmallows, we were shortly commissioned to produce the second campaign, expanding the set to include beards, paper planes, donuts and cereal milk. An interesting brief indeed! TJ NY ran the whole production, comprising of a photo shoot in LA with the talent, capturing the various props and backgrounds on a photo shoot in a local NY studio, creative post-production in the studio, integrating the photography of the various backgrounds together and adding the finishing touches in retouch, to match the familiar brand guidelines of Progressive.

Concept

Pre-visualisation

CGI

Photography

Live-Action

Animation

Edit

Post-Production

Concept

Working alongside Arnold ad agency in Boston, we were excited to be involved in the legendary Progressive Insurance ads in which character ‘Flo’ takes centre stage. The slogan for this edition of the campaign was: ‘Insurance Savings that stand out’.

The concept was to hide Flo within playful situations, using the white brand color of Progressive. We worked closely with the agency to ensure we represented the heart of the tag line: ‘STAND OUT’.

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Pre-Production

Working with a modern day budget, we needed a clever solution to maximise every aspect of this production. Flo was made available to us for 3hours from a separate product shoot happening in LA. Funnily enough, we had already done a recent shoot of white bunnies for the Frontier Airlines TVC (, we had our animal wrangler ready to go in NYC. Working with our partner photographer Joshua Dalsimer, Glen Taylor creatively led this production. Breaking down the shoot requirements to individual plates needed for compositing. Working with a body double for both rabbits and marshmallows, we were able to avoid Flo being bitten, pee’d on or beaten by sugary candy.

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Shoot Production and On Set Supervision

We managed the shoot productions on both campaigns. The first shoot took place over two days in Los Angeles, where the Progressive star ‘Flo’ is based. Glen Taylor, NY founder and Creative Director, flew over to be on set and lead the production. Working with photographer Michael Elins, we made sure we captured all the main elements and the specific details that allowed us to create faultless final images.

To get the absolute best result we made sure we captured ‘Flo’ bathing in milk – well okay, a warm water mixture that looked like milk – and it was essential to capture her clothes and hair wet to add to the realism. ‘Flo’ is such a good sport she jumped at the chance!  Being partial to a few doughnuts, she was equally as happy to tuck into those.

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When putting any production together, our role is to balance budget, schedule, production logistics to achieve the highest levels of quality. Our role was to execute a level of finish that added value to the idea while pushing 'Flo's legendary character' front and centre.

CGI Production – Planes

As is often the case, we wanted to capture as much in camera as possible, however sometimes CGI is the only approach. Creating the paper planes in CGI we had more control over the image dynamics and were able to come up with endless compositions options.

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Post-Production

Following our production pipeline, the agency and client were kept informed at key stages, and guided through the decision-making processes. By re-utilising assets for consistency, establishing fixed camera positions and using proven shaders, the creative leads could optimise the quality of the material and answer all client, creative and production issues.

Our complete image production service allowed us to produce the campaign entirely in-house, through our photography, CGI and retouch teams. We understand that time, budget and flexibility are all important in the production process. The benefits, therefore, of having TJ run complete productions are numerous. It enables us to streamline all areas of production with a focus on giving our clients the very highest quality visuals.

Results

The original ‘cutesy’ campaign with the bunnies and marshmallow was such a sweet success, it led onto the 4 additional ideas for the Stand Out concept with Flo, hiding her in cereal, a beard, paper aeroplanes and donuts. All final results were visually beautiful ads, which we proudly delivered to a very happy client.

The final artwork ran across magazine spreads and online. 

Testimonial

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“It was a blast to shoot with you all. It’s beautiful and wouldn’t have been done without all the insight and creative collaboration from everyone. Really appreciate all the hard work and working with us throughout the process.”

Marketing Producer, Arnold Boston