Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!
Actors cook up comic chemistry
By Theresa Howard, USA TODAY
05/13/2002 - Updated 08:01 PM ET

Fedex helps a supplier keep up with delivery after its products become hot in the haute couture world.

Comic pairings can set the stage for appealing entertainment.

Think Abbott and Costello, or Lucy and Desi. Or more recently, Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza.

Good pairings seem able to play off each other effortlessly. Their chemistry and timing can create hilarious — and memorable — comedy bits.

Who can forget "Who's on First," the skit about baseball names, with Bud Abbott gamely trying to convince Lou Costello that it's a statement, not a question?

Through the years, marketers have tried to capture such chemistry and memorability by creating their own comic pairings for ads.

Many have been bantering couples, such as Howie Long and Teri Hatcher for Radio Shack and James Garner and Mariette Hartley for Polaroid. But their dialogue rarely went beyond typical "he said/she said" comedy.

Now, FedEx has introduced a comic team of two pals in its new campaign with the theme: Don't worry. There's a FedEx for that.

The understated comic formula of the ads, by agency BBDO, uses dialogue twists and timing.

The premise is that a guy, leader Steve Carell, is relating a bizarre "business legend" — in the sense of an "urban legend" — to his pal, Joe Narciso. The tales just happen to include FedEx services.

But Narciso, who is always a step behind, interjects a comic twist at just the right moment.

Among the funny stories Carell tells is one about a dot-com slacker so engrossed in a Hogan's Heroes TV marathon that he almost misses the FedEx deadline. Another is about a bad birthday Bundt cake that disables an entire office, including the mailroom guys. The food poisoning epidemic leaves one salesman, with a cardboard birthday hat and confused look, to handle company shipping that day.

But as Carell gets to how FedEx saved the day, Narciso gets sidetracked. He asks about the specific episode of Hogan's Heroes or wants to know more about the "bad" Bundt cake.

"A big part of the success of this is the timing and the casting," says Steve Pacheco, manager of advertising for FedEx. "The casting took forever on this because we wanted to be dead-on right."

It's close, according to consumers familiar with the campaign surveyed by Ad Track, USA TODAY's weekly consumer poll. About 17% like it "a lot" compared with the Ad Track average of 22%.

And Pacheco believes the ads would have polled higher if not for a cutback in spending for the campaign this year.

"These are episodic in nature, and the more consumers watch, the more they are pulled in. But if people didn't view it enough, they weren't fully engaged," he says.

Viewers who were engaged saw two actors who really click in their roles, Pacheco says. "It's all about the delivery."

And to get that kind delivery, the agency and FedEx conducted extensive casting to find candidates for the roles of straight man and funny partner. Research included a review of dialogue-heavy films by David Mamet.

To decide on the starring duo, the company cut the possibilities down to a short list of leaders and followers. They were then auditioned together to get the right pair.

The lead went to Carell, who's seen regularly on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as the "Ad Nauseam" correspondent. As the follower, veteran character actor Narciso got the call.

The company and agency think the pair is working out well enough to plan new versions of the ads to begin appearing in the fall. They will run more frequently than the first round is airing.

"We've got to power it up," Pacheco says. FedEx's estimated $85 million media account was trimmed back a great deal after Sept. 11.

"We'll have a normal media year starting June 1," Pacheco says. "And with regular media and regular world conditions, we'll get the full wind behind this."

_________
© USA Today Online

back