The Doobie Brothers aren’t really siblings and neither are Michael Gelfand and Ian Letts, aka The Perlorian Brothers. We thought this was common knowledge, but apparently some really literal people are still confused.

“We worked with an agency recently who were very disappointed and said that we should just be called The Perlorian Friends instead,” says Gelfand.

“But given that we’re not really friends,” adds Letts, “maybe it should be The Perlorian Colleagues.”

Not wanting to complicate the matter further, the duo decides spontaneously that a name change is in order. The Perlorian Brothers are out, they say tongue-in-cheek, ¡Perlorian! is in.

“That’s an exclusive,” Letts informs Boards. “But you have to find that key on your keyboard which is really difficult. It’s a key combination that’s going to mess everybody up and we’re not going to get any more coverage.”

“But when people talk about us it’s going to be, ¡Perlorian!,” enthuses Gelfand.

“[Like] you say ¡Ole!,” agrees Letts.

The Spanish double exclamation marks suit the pair well. For English speakers its very doubleness suggests that not only is one excited, one is excited to the max!! This, in a nutshell, characterizes their work.

Take the manic Castrol spots, “Grease Monkeys” and “Jimmy”. The first dances around the hush-hush territory of human-simian love, the second features a crazed Scottish mechanic whipping motorists with a dipstick while screaming, “Think with your dipstick, Jimmy!”

“It doesn’t get more slapstick than slapping someone with a stick,” points out Letts.

While the humor in Castrol is overt, other spots display a subtler touch, like slacker Donnie covertly giving his girlfriend’s skeptical parents the finger in the eponymous Unicef Tap Project spot. Or the odd-couple pairings in the Ask.com campaign where the inner voices of inquisitive individuals are portrayed as their physical opposites. In “Eighth Grader”, for example, a lanky, young boy’s inner voice is an older, overweight woman.

While ¡Perlorian!, who are repped by Furlined in the US, Soft Citizen in Canada and Blink in the UK (although they have yet to inform their respective prodcos of the name change), may have suffered slightly from literal interpretations, at least one helped craft a funnier spot for Snickers.

In “Patrick Chewing” (featuring Patrick Ewing), the hulking former NBA star executes a backboard-obliterating dunk on an unsuspecting friend.

“The script said that the backboard explodes, which I think meant shatters, but we read that literally,” explains Letts. “The crew put primacord behind the backboard and detonated it. Within minutes NYPD was there and some guy with medals was dressing down our AD. We almost got the shoot shut down.”

Nevertheless, the revision made for bigger laughs. Perhaps literal isn’t that bad after all. ¡Viva Perlorian!

Furlined> www.furlined.com
Soft Citizen> www.softcitizen.com
Blink> www.blinkprods.com