Deutsch LA: Team Players

After getting together at Deutsch a year ago, the art director and copywriting partnership of Paul Oberlin and Matt Sherman has seized one of the biggest crowns in Stateside television – a Super Bowl spot starring a small, shiny and very speedy CGI beetle. US Editor Isobel Roberts meets the men racing to the top with the Volkswagen account

It’s been a pretty damn good 12 months for art director Paul Oberlin and copywriter Matt Sherman. Since pairing up just over a year ago, the creative team has scored a spot in the Super Bowl, collaborated with Saturday Night Live comedian Bill Hader and even taken Noam Murro’s Porsche up to high (perhaps even illegal) speeds.

One of the creative teams working on the Volkswagen account at Deutsch in Los Angeles, the duo were teamed up when they both started in new roles last year. While Oberlin had swapped in NYC for the sunnier climes of California and moved from BBDO NY, Sherman instead made the jump from small shop to big player, joining Deutsch from LA agency Ground Zero. Sherman had studied advertising in his native Florida. “I thought it was a great way to write and get paid for it, plus Jerry Seinfeld said it was good,” he jokes – but it wasn’t until an internship at BBDO while at college that Oberlin followed suit. “I was shadowing a couple of guys on the HBO team,” recollects Oberlin, “and I thought ‘holy shit, these guys are rock stars, this is what I want to do’.”

And ever since Deutsch played matchmaker, the duo has been on something of a roll, bouncing ideas around and playing off each other to create some standout work. “We have very different working styles,” Sherman says, “but it’s good because we’ve got a shorthand, and we don’t bullshit each other when we think an idea isn’t working.”

“And I think if we’d paired up with other people at the agency we wouldn’t have been as successful as we are right now,” adds Oberlin.

One of those successful ideas landed them the holy grail of American TV advertising – a spot in the Super Bowl. A super-sleek CGI job starring a speedy black beetle, the film rose to the challenge of showcasing Volkwagen’s imminent new Beetle but without actually being able to show the car. And with the full creative team covering the brief but only two spots eventually going to air, competition was tough.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a Super Bowl spot at first,” says Oberlin. “We were doing the Beetle launch spot but the client liked the concept so much they decided to run it for the Super Bowl. Having a spot in that is like the ultimate goal in advertising, so it was a big moment for us.”

With so much CGI involved in bringing the commercial to life, masterminded by director Dante Ariola and The Mill London, much of the production process came down to trust in the many weeks it took to piece the spot together.

“That was my first experience of bringing a script to life where you don’t go out and really shoot a commercial,” recalls Sherman, “and you’re really having to take a leap of faith. We could write the script as much as we wanted but it came down to trusting a lot of other people to help us get it on screen the way we had seen it in our heads.”

Sherman and Oberlin were actually on the other side of the country – in the Big Apple – when the script was selected, working on an entirely different type of content for Volkswagen – a comedy-driven web series featuring SNL’s Bill Hader. Shot over two days, the pair worked with Hader and his writer John Mulaney and Funny or Die director Jake Szymanski to capture a multitude of films.

“We were writing concepts on the morning of the shoot and tossing out jokes on the fly to see which ones worked and didn’t,” explains Oberlin. “And I think we both learned a lot on the project,” chimes in Sherman, “because we wrote so many scripts and then you get in a room with a guy like Bill and his writer and the two of them can just riff and come up with a million ideas that either make yours better or crush them. So you have to be able to roll with everything that’s changing. But it was great – it feels pretty good to come up with an idea that makes Bill Hader laugh.”

The duo recently penned another comic script for the Volkswagen Tiguan. Featuring an invisible piñata and helmed by Noam Murro, the shoot was topped off with the chance to road-test the director’s new Porsche – but sports cars aside, the raft of top talent the pair have collaborated with is spurring them on. “We’ve been lucky this year to work with pretty big directors who have been inspiring; Noam Murro, Dante Ariola, and we’re also working with Lance Acord. What they bring to the table really inspires you.”

But what really helps drive them forward is the heritage of the Volkswagen brand itself. “We’re competing against the other teams,  and every other car manufacturer in the category, but what I feel we are always up against is the Volkswagen legacy,” concludes Sherman, “because we’re always wondering whether this will hang in the same circle or the same creative echelon as great Volkswagen ads such as Pink Moon or Mr Blue Sky.”