Mennen Speed Stick "Unattended Laundry" (2013) :30 (USA)

Boutique post-production facility Colorflow provided color correction and final post services for a spot for Mennen’s Speed Stick deodorant that became a surprise hit during this year’s Super Bowl broadcast.

Conceived and produced by Ryactive, an independent creative boutique based in Oakland, Unattended Laundry is set in a busy Laundromat, where an impatient young man removes another customer’s clothes from a dryer after they’ve finished spinning. The guy is caught red-handed, or rather yellow-handed, as the owner of the clothes walks up to find him clutching a pair of her canary-colored panties. He’s embarrassed but it doesn’t show, thanks to Speed Stick.

The spot was an unexpected entry in this year’s lineup of Super Bowl ads. The spot originally ran on Hulu and its popularity there prompted Mennen parent Colgate-Palmolive to run it on the world’s biggest advertising venue.

For Ryactive, placing the spot on the Super Bowl was akin to winning the lottery. “It’s gotten phenomenal exposure,” says Ryan Pamplin, the agency’s founder and creative director. “Our phone has been ringing off the hook.”

Colorflow’s role was to give the spot a broadcast quality finish. Colorist Alexander MacLean put the spot through final color correction on an Assimilate Scratch system. He also conformed the spot, added graphics and applied the final sound mix, allowing Ryactive to walk out of the session with a fully finished commercial.

“Colorflow delivered top-notch, triple A quality,” recalls David Brashear, the spot’s director. “The turnaround was fast and the results were much better than we would have gotten from a larger facility that wouldn’t have given us as much personal attention.”

In fact, Pamplin and Brashear sat in on the color session working with MacLean, fine-tuning the details in real-time. “It was a pleasure working with Ryan to enhance his creative vision and reinforce the brand’s identify through color,” MacLean says.

Pamplin says that Colorflow’s work was an essential part of readying the spot for the big game. “This commercial followed a very interesting path,” he notes, “and everything that happened along the way, including the work that was done at Colorflow, contributed to its getting picked up for the Super Bowl.”

Agency: Ryactive, Oakland. Ryan Pamplin, creative director/producer; David Brashears, director.
Post: Colorflow, Berkeley, Calif. Alexander MacLean, colorist.