Why You Can Drive into a Vortex with The AA

Since 1905, the AA has been a symbol of confidence for divers in the UK, and this month it built on its position in the market through a new, fully-integrated campaign with the tagline ‘It’s OK, I’m with the AA’. Created by agency The Gate and production company Academy, the campaign once again reassured drivers that regardless of how much the world changes and what challenges it dishes out, the AA will be there to provide support with expertise and pioneering knowledge.

In the film we see a range of difficulties faced by the characters, in the face of which they stay unfazed because of AA’s unshakable support. The comedy-infused spot showcases all sorts of disasters, from swallowing your car keys, to quite literally driving into a vortex, or the car breaking down in the middle of a heist. All of these scenes are set to the perfectly comedically timed Chopin’s ‘Waltz no. 7’ for a touch of drama. 

And, because the AA wanted to tell its customers one thing with the campaign - that they will be OK, as long as they are on the brand’s side - the creatives at The Gate also looked at the brief as a single word: ‘confidence’. Rob Bovington and Stephen Webley were astonished at how prepared the brand was to push the envelope with the films. “It’s that kind of bravery that makes space for creativity and it attracts a lot of talented people - like Si & Ad, the directors from Academy.” 

Si & Ad turned out to be the perfect partners in crime in their own right - “They’ve got funny in their bones, and they knew exactly how to bring this work to life in not only a comedic but visually beautiful way,” continue Rob and Stephen. This trust between brand, agency and production company led to a great time on set and opened up some time to have a giggle - an environment in which wrangling a campaign of this size is a breeze.

“Sometimes you have to sit down and drag the best out of an agency script, but in this case, it was all there already, and we had the fun part of bringing it to life,” say Si & Ad when looking back to the start of the project. To them, the brief was enticing, and just what they needed to bring out the comedy. “The thing that really got us interested was when the team at The Gate said they wanted the phrase ‘It’s OK, I’m with the AA’ to become common parlance in the playground and pub.”

Si & Ad were just as delighted with AA’s ‘can do’ attitude through the entire production process. “Where collaboration flows in both directions and the shared goal is a great film, it’s normal to get on with the agency creatively. What you can’t always get a handle on is the creative sensibilities of the client, and for a job to go well you need them to be singing from the same page as the rest of us. This was one of those jobs where the client was bob-on, creatively and personally. They believed in the concept and were collaborative throughout.”

Everybody was firmly on the same page, so what was left was to concentrate on the tone of the ad creatively and make sure it came through with the correct messaging. “The AA wanted UK drivers to know that they’re not just for the roadside - they have services for every aspect of the driving world,” says Rob. Building this idea on a foundation of confidence was what reasserted The AA as the market leader. “As for the tone, we wanted to make something unforgettable, so we wrote a sticky line and turned it into comedy - the ad industry has plucked enough heart strings, we felt it was time to stand out, tickle the funny bones.”

To get the comedic timing right, especially with the delivery of ‘the line’, Sid & Ad knew that character development needed to be executed to perfection. Coincidentally, it also became a ‘fabulously fun’ process. They say they anticipated to find the fine line between keeping it real and exaggerating for comedic purposes, with “a strong probability that [they’d] employ a sliding scale that shifted up through the gears as the film progressed.” 

And so they did. The scenes become more fantastical as the film goes on, until we come to understand that The AA are your best bet against your car being sucked into the void… or surviving the experience. “A lot of experimentation happened in tandem with the casting process. It was a hysterical few weeks.”

While experimentation was on one side of the scale, The Gate were also conscious that the characters needed to be believable, relatable and reflective of the UK. “We started with our outlandish scenarios, then began thinking about what type of person would make that set back even funnier. Si & Ad are exceptional performance directors and they played an essential role in constructing these characters with us.”

Si & Ad were also the culprit for the incredible progression of the film. Momentum was on their mind when they were deciding on what the script needed to look like as the stakes rose through the spot. “We loved the idea of the story starting out in a believable world and then escalating to less likely scenarios with bigger consequences. Collectively we had some pretty crazy ideas,” they say.

Relatability needed to be continued through the location scouting too, and as Rob and Stephen rightly remind us - not everything can be shot in the Maldives. So, sometimes, Dagenham has to do the job. “We had to reflect the UK, that was a given. But Academy and its location scouts found some wonderful locations that, although were authentically British, made for beautiful settings to tell a story. This is most notable in the bedroom scene, bank and hospital. Creeping around an abandoned art deco hospital at night wasn’t terrifying in the slightest…” 

To this end, The Gate knew that the film had to have the necessary scale and populist feel to appeal to most of the UK, so it was also important to not ostracise The AA’s core breakdown members, while also reminding younger audiences that there is more to the brand than just roadside assistance.

On another note, music was a huge nut to crack, according to Si & Ad. While the script initially came to them with a track already attached that felt like a good fit, they weren’t far into photography before it became apparent that it wasn’t absolutely perfect tonally. “Luckily for us, Adam Spivey, editor extraordinaire at The Assembly Rooms, came up with the piano piece you see today. The comic timing of it hit the nail on the head and perfectly holds your hand through the film.” It was also Adam - who crafted the best selection of detail-packed scenes that we see as the final spot - cutting masterfully to comedic timing while allowing for the performance of the cast to shine.

According to Rob and Stephen, the campaign took six months in total, with the most terrifying part being having it in the can and waiting for airing - a period dense with emotion. “Now it’s out in the wild we can look back and revel on the good bits, such as - reading an array of highly risqué scenarios to our clients, spending the day with a man-mountain wrestler called Bullit, debating what makes a snack a funny snack, unnecessarily long conversations about Swindon and most notably having the likes of Stephanie Cleak [agency producer] and Steve Overs [production producer] as our on hand magicians.”