Part 6 South Korea: PSN Puts World Cup Commercials on the Map for Russia 2018
World Cup Fever is coming to a boiling point, and brands have been clamouring to speak to the huge audiences tuning in to the football action in Russia.
World Cup commercials have been being commissioned in countries around the globe, but in a worldwide tournament, fraught with rivalries and fronted by some of the hardest to reach talent on the globe, how do you know where to shoot?
PSN calls on its production partners from around the world to share their insights on what countries are getting through the group stages at pitch. In the sixth in a series of World Cup features they speak to Kimi Kim, Service EP at PSN South Korea, the woman on the ground for a recently released spot by Cass Fresh for their Official World Cup sponsorship.
Q> Oriental Brewery are based in South Korea, why was Seoul the best place to shoot the commercial?
Kimi Kim> The commercial has a very strong local story behind it. South Korea were last semi-finalists in 2002 but haven’t since competed well internationally. The underlying message was that even though our opposition will be very hard to beat, we won’t know until we try.
The message can kind of be applied anywhere. Oriental Brewery actually wanted to work with a foreign director and we had worked with their chosen director two years ago through PSN so they came straight to us when they decided Seoul would be the place to shoot.
Q> How did the campaign come about?
KK> The big idea came from the agency but the director worked very closely on the storyline. He had learned of our football history and wanted to inject a lot of local feeling into the narrative. It was interesting to see how a foreigner interprets the culture and aesthetic of Korea. The challenge for us was that the director wanted to go very raw with what he was depicting but the agency wanted the whole commercial to look polished. We had to strike the balance with the locations and services.
Q> Were you working with national celebrity talent for the film?
KK> Yes, two renowned Korean football players were in the film as well as a famous commentator. They are generally very nice people so, it was very good experience working with them.
Q> What would you say were key elements of this campaign in terms of production?
KK> The biggest challenge was balancing the demands of the agency and the director and ensuring the best visual outcome. We had a large number of shots to complete within two days and on the second day it was raining heavily. We had to incorporate an additional shoot day to capture the shots needed. Luckily, this gave the director the opportunity to capture additional footage that was later pitched in to the agency and made it into the final ad.
