Cramer-Krasselt and Sarofsky Present Powerful Customer Story for Landmark Credit Union

Landmark Credit Union recently launched an integrated marketing campaign activating its refreshed brand identity through the theme of Banking Made Easy. The video components of the cross-media campaign developed by leading independent marketing, advertising, and communications agency Cramer Krasselt include a :30 spot (“Emily’s Landmark Checking Story”), two :15 spots (“Sarah’s Landmark Auto Loan Story” and “Tyler’s Landmark Loan Story”), and many custom cut-down versions. These spots were produced in their entirety by one-stop cross-media production company Sarofsky.

"We've been providing great rates, low fees, and excellent service to members for 90 years and have offerings to help support anyone and everyone," said Brian Melter, chief experience officer of Landmark Credit Union. “We are committed to delivering on the 'Banking Made Easy' promise illustrated so creatively in our new campaign."

Conceived by Cramer Krasselt, each spot colourfully embodies Landmark’s new visual identity and commitment, presenting a powerful customer story using a novel, mixed-media approach. Representing Landmark employees working for customers by showing only their hands, each subject presents and manipulates real-world scenes and objects (a functioning 3D lighthouse, complete homes with fully decorated interiors, driving vehicles, etc.) to highlight the benefits of banking with Landmark.

The campaign’s seamless and sophisticated visual-effects driven narratives maximise capabilities Sarofsky has mastered through its high-profile collaborations with top-tier studios, brands, and agencies worldwide. Each finished spot also features exceptional colour grading completed through Sarofsky’s strategic partnership with Nolo Digital Film.

Briefed by Cramer Krasselt’s SVP group creative director/art director Jim Root, associate creative director/writer Sandy DerHovsepian, and senior producer Craig Clark, Sarofsky’s project team was led by executive creative director Erin Sarofsky, creative director Stefan Draht, managing director/executive producer Steven Anderson, head of production/producer Joel Signer, and producer Andrew Rosenstein.

“For this unexpected approach to bringing customer stories to life, the integration of the hands was a key consideration for us,” Stefan began. “We immediately started thinking about how they interact with the environments and how they transform or impel each story.”

To clarify, from the perspective of Sarofsky’s makers, the challenge of creating the real-world objects the hands would interact with was intricate but relatively straightforward work. The creative efforts began right away using Maxon Cinema4D to easily create all of the CG elements and animations, rendering using Redshift, and compositing all of the pieces together with Adobe After Effects. All of the editorial work was done in Adobe Premiere, with Autodesk Flame providing finishing and additional 2D support.

In the meantime, knowing the importance of the physical shoot to capture the very best hand choreography possible, Stefan created a small tabletop setup with a static camera within Sarofsky’s studio. There, equipped with stand-in “real-world” objects built by Lori Bohner, Draht spent many hours exploring lensing, camera position, and hand movements with the various objects. These photographic plates were then captured and used as references for the CG previs produced by The Third Floor.

“Having these pre-visualizations allowed us to build out the editorial timing for the hero spots as well as the cutdowns before ever shooting a frame of film,” Stefan explained.

Describing the actual shoot with director of photography Brian Schilling, Stefan also detailed the innovative use of a process called rotomation. “By using a hero and a witness camera, we were able to generate CG versions of the hands, which we used to ensure that our CG elements were interacting with the hands correctly and receiving or generating the correct shadows and reflections,” he said.

While these expert touches further heighten the believability of each finished spot, Sarofsky’s shadow work is even more intricate. Because much of the CG team’s work was completed early into the process, they had more time to add finishing touches at the end. “Things like dust or falling plaster, or the way the sporty car peels out and leaves tire tracks create little moments that make rewatching these spots extra rewarding,” Stefan added.

For Erin Sarofsky, “This project is a great example of how being thoughtful up front and assembling the right team makes everything easier throughout,” she said. “With the team we had, we found the perfect back-and-forth to ensure everything came together as efficiently as possible while raising the bar as high as possible for our clients and partners.”

Signer also commented on the team effort. “Once again, our partnership with Nolo helped us add another mission-critical touch to this campaign,” he said. “Colorists Mike Matusek and Elliot Rudmann were able to help us nail the skin-tones, dial-in just the right blues, and address all of those subtle details to finish these spots spectacularly.”

For Cramer-Krasselt, credit also goes to executive producer Brian Cooper and account supervisor Taylor Kaine. Complete project credits are available upon request.

To learn more about Landmark Credit Union, please visit here.