For its latest Kayak.com commercial, Barton F. Graf 9000 and director Harold Einstein fall back on that timeless old comedy chestnut—the grotesque medical experiment.
Seems our brain-surgeon hero doesn't have the free time after work to search loads of travel websites for great deals on flights and hotels. So, he has to squeeze it in during his operations. He gets his unconscious patient unwittingly to help out by setting him up with a laptop and then squishily jabbing his exposed brain, causing involuntary movements that apparently translate to Web searches—not the most efficient system, perhaps, but one that seems to get the job done. However, as his assistant points out, this probably doesn't qualify as ethical behavior. It would be faster and less evil to search Kayak, a one-and-done solution that allows you to search hundreds of travel sites at once.
Linking travel and brain injuries is an interesting choice, but Graf has been doing oddball work for this client all along—most recently, the spot with the human-dummy pantograph, which was perhaps a little better at dramatizing consumers' absurd hunt for efficiencies in the travel-booking process. You won't soon forget this new spot, though—it will surely stick in your brain for some time.
CREDITS
Client: Kayak
Spot: "Brain Surgery"
CMO: Robert Birge
Director of Marketing: Emily Scott
VP, Brand Marketing: Stephanie Retcho
Agency: Barton F. Graf 9000, New York
Founder, CCO: Gerry Gra
Executive Creative Director: Eric Kallman
Copywriter, Art Director: Matty Smith
Copywriter, Art Director: Joey Ianno
Producer: Amanda Revere
Account Director: Becca Lawson
Production Company: Station Film
Director: Harold Einstein
Executive Producers: Tom Rossano, Eric Liney
Editing: Mackenzie Cutler
Editor: Gavin Cutler
Assistant Editor: Ryan Steele
Executive Producer: Sasha Hirschfeld
VFX: Schmidgital
Audio: Lime Studios
Audio Engineer: Loren Silber