Carol DelGrosso conceptualizes and creates the Ohio State Fair TV and radio ad campaign.
Creating TV and radio ads from scratch is no easy task, but for Carol DelGrosso, the Creative Director at Milenthal-DelGrosso, it’s just another day at work.
In her fourth time working with the Ohio State Fair on its annual round of TV and radio ads leading up to the summertime event, Carol looked forward to finding out what the Ohio State Fair’s theme would be for the 2013 advertising campaign. It’s like finding out what the key ingredient is going to be on a cooking show challenge.
This year’s ‘key ingredient’ turned out to be a board game, an actual physical copy of which was being developed and sold by the Ohio State Fair. The challenge was moving ahead with the production while the game was only in the middle of its development.
According to Carol, “It gave us a great opportunity to inject some ideas we felt would really showcase the exciting offering at the Ohio State Fair.”
Getting to work immediately, Carol began storyboarding what she envisioned would be the layout of the commercial. This process saw a lot of back-and-forth between her and the planners of the Ohio State Fair. The idea was to connect the dots between the “board game” theme and the realistic experience of the Ohio State Fair, aptly termed by the ’Feelin’Fairtastic’ line used by the Ohio State Fair throughout their entire marketing effort.
Carol conceptualized an animated, composited theme for the board game, but it wasn’t until she added the final piece to the equation that the spot began to come together – live-action.
“I wanted an exciting play for the game.” Carol explained, “Board games make you think of rules, directions, challenges, and competition – but without live-action emotions, I didn’t think that it would be as effective.”
After roughly 6 weeks of production that included scripting, casting for expressive faces, a blue screen studio shoot, voice-overs and sound design for TV and radio, 3D animation, and an intensive editing process Carol finally had the final product she had envisioned over six weeks prior to completion.
Want to take a step into the creative process? Here are some of the story-boards and images that inspired the commercial:
