PPG Olympic: Open. Stain. Enjoy.
Trade School Custom Production for The Home Depot | March 2023
Trade School did three simultaneous productions and ad campaigns for PPG for The Home Depot: one each for Olympic (stain), Glidden (consumer paint) and PPG (professional paint). Our team concepted all three at once, then we divided up the work among us. My husband and I had moved into our house the previous February and stained the brand-new back deck ourselves, so I had learned all about prepping and staining a deck from that experience... turns out I was the ONLY person on the team who had done that, so the Olympic part of the project became mine!
The Insight
The idea of staining a deck means, "Project with a capital 'P'" to most people. It's a pain in the a** but the end result is so worth the effort when you can sit back and enjoy it.
The Idea
When you're really into a project, you can zen out and lose track of time. We took that kernel of an idea and pitched making ASMR-like content for all of our video units, only bringing in the iconic "Home Depot Beat" music in at the very end.
For our static visuals needed for the digital campaign, we wanted everything to fit the Oddly Satisfying vibe: individual items knolled and arranged not just neatly, but precisely. Beautiful blocks of color accenting the capabilities of the products.
The Details
Olympic had four products we needed to feature: Olympic Maximum, Olympic Elite, Olympic Waterguard and Olympic Wood Protector. Maximum and Elite would each get their own 00:06 and 00:15 digital videos in different aspect ratios; and all four product groups would be getting a series of stills.
One of the featured stain colors across all four products was Cedar; so, I made the suggestion we stain as much as we could with Cedar and use it in all of our close-up brush shots so those videos and stills could be used across all four groups.
The Execution
Video
Olympic Maximum
Olympic Elite
Stills
My Role
Our full team did the initial pass at concepts for the three brands; and the one that Jen, Nathan and I were most excited about—and put the most thought into—for Olympic was, "Open. Stain. Enjoy." To help sell in the idea, I shot several macro videos at home with my phone. Almost all of the close-ups and tracking shots that made it into the final storyboards originated from my iPhone shots.
As the Art Director, I was able to select the color palette and every product that would appear onscreen... and you'd be surprised how many products that ended up being all together. I did a few different comps and layouts of the both the overhead flat lay / knolled shots and the product shots showing their stained color sections beneath them. My absolute favorite pieces were the Adirondack chairs; Olympic Elite is tintable and I wanted to show that off. The color-striping on the backs of the chairs started with one of the comps I did early on that our clients fell in love with, and the final chairs look spectacular against the gray chipped slate of the firepit area.
After our on-set production wrapped, John McDonald spent a day at Trade School Studios doing pickup stills—and that included every overhead shot for Olympic. I knew we had that day reserved, so I was a one-man Art Department meticulously setting up every shot. John did 95% of the final post-production on the stills, but there were a few that Jen and I helped with as well. One of the products was not available when we were shooting, so I took the packaging art file for that can and digitally wrapped it over one of the cans of Olympic Maximum we'd shot on-set.
The. Coolest. Thing. Ever. was getting to attend the foley session with Tunewelders and watch them recreate the sounds for our spots. (It was also The. Grossest. Thing. Ever... I will never be able to look at macaroni and cheese the same way again)
In addition to overseeing the post-production editing, Nathan and I had the additional roles of developing ALL the final digital content. This included units for META, Nextdoor, Pinterest, YouTube, online display banners, digital audio, and rich media interscroller and superscape units via Padsquad. In all, we ended up producing 159 unique deliverables for the campaign out of the assets we'd shot.
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Location
Shoot Days (1 outdoors, 1 in-studio)
Talented Performers
Product Families
Unique Videos
Still Shots
Ad Units
Unique Deliverables
The Team
Sanders Hearne, Head of Creative
Jennifer Barclay, Group Creative Director
Olympic
- Scott Hunt, Creative Director - Art
- Nathan Burns, Creative Director - Copy
Glidden
- Lindsey Cirmotich, Creative Director - Art
- Kellie Dickinson, Creative Director - Copy
- Tony Jenkins, Creative Director - Copy
PPG Pro
- Caty Coplin, Creative Director - Art
- Nathan Burns, Creative Director - Copy
Aaron Platt, Director/Director of Photography
John McDonald, Photographer
Judith Hoffman, Executive Producer
Pooja Pasari, Senior Producer/Post Producer
Vivian Zingleman, Editor
Ryan Harrington, Editor
Kris Boban, Lead Motion Designer/VFX
Jason Todd Shannon & Harper Harris from Tunewelders, Foley & Sound Design
Wanna find me elsewhere?
You'll get bored quickly... it's a lot of photos of my adorable husband, our kids and our rescue dog, Porter.
