Game Night

Directed by Vaco Studios

A lifestyle spot sells you the life. A Coca Cola spot sells you the feeling of being in the room. I wanted the second one.

That difference lives in the edit more than anywhere else. Lifestyle cutting holds on the aspirational frame, the body, the location, the thing you are supposed to want. Feeling cutting holds on reactions. So both of these sit on faces a beat longer than the coverage was asking for, and treat the product as the reason everyone is still sitting there rather than as the hero of the frame.

Summer Vibes is a group at the beach. Game Night is Scrabble and a little extra fun at the table. Same rule in both. Coca Cola has been running that idea for decades and it works because nobody in the ad appears to be selling anything. They are just having a better time than you are.

Vaco Studios shot both. My job was deciding which take of somebody laughing was the true one.