A large-scale agency by Swedish standards, Lowe Brindfors employs roughly 20 creatives working on ads for clients including Saab, Manpower, Signum, Yoggi, Eurofootball.com and Förenings Sparbanken.

Art director Mitte Blomqvist and copywriters Olle Sjöden and Björn Stahl worked with creative director Johan Nilsson to come up with three spots for Stjärn TV Chello, a broadband service. "Rökrutan" (Smoker's Corner), "Handslaget" (Handshake) and "Pizzan" (Pizza) all come off in an unglamorous, deadpan manner, with normal people going about their everyday business in an orderly fashion. In each case there is an abrupt hesitation (15 seconds of each 30-second spot), resulting in uneasy waiting before the various actions (lighting a cigarette, shaking hands, serving a pizza) are resolved. "Rökrutan" won a Bronze Lion for Commercial Public Services at this year's Cannes Festival.

Blomqvist and Sjöden say the delayed reaction approach was appropriate for Chello and the Swedish audience.

"When we did the market analysis, we found the one thing most people have problems with on the net is speed," says Blomqvist.

"Our idea was to show how absurd it would be in real life to accept such a slow way of connection to people in general. People just accept it when surfing, you are used to it getting slow and having to wait. If you translate that into real life situations you see how absurd it is," explains Blomqvist. Sjöden elaborates: "Because we wanted the commercials to have the feeling that this is very real to make the breaks seem weirder, in the beginning of "Rökrutan," they are talking about what people talk about on breaks from their jobs," says Sjöden. "This weirdness combined with reality, the idea makes the ad strong. Also it doesn't look very much like a commercial, it is not so slick, rather it is quite ugly and normal."

In order to achieve a look that was neither glossy nor sales-oriented, the focus was on achieving an air of complete normalcy.

"If the look is more normal, then this absurd thing pops out more; there are no fast cuts or anything like that," says Blomqvist. "This long wait feels really long when everything is simple and easy and not too flashy."

Agency producer Mark Baughen and the creatives worked with Fredrik Edfeldt of Stockholm's Pinguin Films (and Outlaw in London) to capture the normality vs. absurdity demanded by the script. Edfeldt shares some of his contributions to the campaign.

"We talked about making this break and pause a little bit longer, having them speak about the weather or small talk, but it all ended up that the best thing to do was to keep the silence, because as the audience you feel it is very slow," says Edfeldt. "When the viewer sees the commercial, they tend to wait to see how long the break will be."

Often, intentionally boring the audience is avoided in spots, but the creatives felt that Swedes have long laughed at their own supposed dry, boring and socialistic ways. As for the effectiveness of the campaign, Blomqvist says it produced more response than the client was prepared to deal with.

"When the ads started running (the client) had some problems because too many people wanted to sign up, and they got bad press because they weren't prepared," she says.

WEB.FILES

Lowe Brindfors> www.lowebrindfors.se