The brief
PC Specialist are one of the best-known names in custom-built computers, and a lot of people think of them as a gaming brand. The brief was to change that perception by showing that custom-built PCs and laptops are for everyone. We worked on this national campaign with their agency, Forward & Thinking, and looked after the advert from start to finish, from taking the brief and developing the script right through to production.
The idea
We started by thinking about the people who’d get the most out of a machine built around them, and settled on four characters: the designer, the creator, the coder and, of course, the gamer.
Working with the client, we gave each of them a setting that suited what they do. The designer has a sleek, modern office, the creator works from a cosy coffee shop, the coder has a comfortable workspace at home, and the gamer gets the kind of room most gamers dream about. Once the characters were agreed, we wrote the script and drew up the storyboard.
The production
We had more than a hundred applications for each role, and we watched the audition tapes the actors sent in until we’d found people who looked right for the part and could say their lines naturally.
The shoot covered four locations in two days, which gave us half a day in each. With so little time, the planning mattered enormously, so the director, producer and director of photography visited every location beforehand and worked out the shots in advance. The gamer’s room was built from scratch, and every location was dressed with props and wardrobe chosen to make each character feel like a real person.
We shot on a Sony Venice camera with anamorphic lenses to give the advert a cinematic look, with a little haze in the air and carefully planned lighting to give each scene some depth, and then it all came together in the edit.
Danny Wan, Brand Marketing Manager at PC Specialist, said afterwards: “I think this advert really encapsulates that message.”
The campaign
Forward & Thinking have shared how the campaign did in their case study. The advert was shown 1,024 times on Channel 4 and ITV, and was seen more than 68.9 million times. On the broadcasters’ streaming services, C4 Streaming and ITVX, it was shown a further 1,794,749 times, and on average 97.5% of those were watched all the way through. The campaign also ran on TalkSport radio, and we made the radio advert too.
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