Summer’s coming! pans over a series of kids costumed as Founding Fathers. “What if the fourth kid was dressed like [general manager] Pete Stoddard from White River Toyota, ’cause that was his hero?” Shumway recalls someone suggesting. “A little kid in a mustache next to all these icons.” The idea became a commercial, and Mini-Pete became a thing. Over successive ads, he acquired his mustached love interest (“Lady Pete”) and engaged her in a dance-off.
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onprofits may not lend themselves to such out-there campaigns. But they’re also hungry for “share of mind” — the visibility that generates donations and grants. And when a for-profit business underwrites a video profile of a nonprofit, “everybody wins,” Cunavelis says. Just ask the folks behind ReBuild Waterbury, one of the local recovery groups formed in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene. To publicize the group’s fundraising, Heritage proposed and underwrote Mt. Mansfield’s 14-minute
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documentary “Rebuilding Waterbury,” which began airing in early 2012. About a year later, ReBuild Waterbury was the first Irene recovery group to announce its plans to disband, having raised a cool million. Theresa Wood, former chair of RW’s steering committee, recalls that initially, “We just thought, This is a nice thing Heritage Ford is doing, and won’t that be nice for historical purposes. I don’t think we knew how instrumental it was until we had the video and were able to use it as a tool.” Wood now credits the film, which spotlighted Waterbury’s flood victims, with helping RW snag a $250,000 grant from the Stiller Family Foundation. “The reality is, it really helped us in our recovery,” she says.
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there’s a good chance Mt. Mansfield Media was responsible.
Mt. Mansfield’s documentary business started with a series of short videos for the Burlington Business Association. Since then, “I’ve seen that grow into a really large and effective part of what we’re offering people and what people want from us,” Shumway says. The brave new world of streaming video content could take Mt. Mansfield a long way from wacky ads — and from advertising, period. Cunavelis points proudly to the journalistic storytelling of the Red Sox doc, which profiles a young East Calais fan with cerebral palsy. He says he hopes to “grow the larger-scale video production … and also stay grounded with our connections and marketing clients in Vermont.” But whether the company’s work is sober or silly, promoting a cause or a product, it’s all about getting eyes (and clicks) with fresh tactics. “People ignore the official language of the world,” Cunavelis says. “They’ve heard the politician and the advertiser say everything you want to hear for so long that they just ignore it. So to be unpredictable and to be refreshingly different is part of the formula [for us].” He looks for employees who have a “free-thinking ability to connect to human nature.” “And to pop culture and film and what’s working in TV,” Shumway adds. “Why is that so popular, and how can we bring that into an effective message for a client?” Case in point: zombies, who star in several of Mt. Mansfield’s Heritage ads, as well as a documentary about local zombie fans called “Green Mountain Z.” The commercials used the flesh eaters to illustrate the deadening atmosphere of car dealerships that aren’t Heritage. Shumway argues it was a “solid creative metaphor” rather than a shock tactic. Even so, “We got complaints from people who thought zombies were too grotesque,” Cunavelis says. But controversy means visibility. “We know when the phone rings with lots of complaints that it’s working,” Cunavelis says of ads in general. Shumway agrees, “You can never, ever separate the two.” When people are bombarded with advertising, attention may be the sincerest form of flattery. Before a screening of Noah last weekend in South Burlington, this reporter watched a captive audience watch two Mt. Mansfield ads. The Heritage spot featured 102-year-old Bill James of Bristol croaking the words, “You nasty old used-car salesman.” In the Von Bargen’s ad, two male office workers sheepishly shared a romantic pirate fantasy. “Weird ads,” somebody muttered. And that’s where “share of mind” starts. m
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