Face to Face with... Xavier & Neves

In their ongoing caign for Trident Senses chewing gum, JWT London’s Bruno Xavier and Christiano Neves have created a mind boggling array of films, events and games that encapsulate the idea of Pointless Fun. Here we catch up with the creative partnership to talk about dancing polar bears and footballing chickens.

The Pointless Fun caign is pretty different to say the least. Where did all the ideas come from?

The ideas came from a true consumer insight. Our target audience said that they don’t buy Trident Senses looking for a rational benefit, like fighting cavities or freshening breath, but to have fun. When we got the brief, one of the insights that really struck us was the fact that the gum is a bit of a pointless purchase. So we wanted to create a vast range of stuff that was pointless but fun.

It’s a huge caign for several countries and spans multiple media formats. How challenging was it to orchestrate everything?

Very challenging, but we knew it was going to be from day one as we were trying to create events and digital experiences that hadn’t been attempted before, like the shadow puppet show at the Barcelona vs Valencia match and the Dude, Where’s My Chicken? game.

We’ve been developing this caign since November of last year and it’s been an incredible journey but also very time consuming, as apart from the webisodes and TV ads (directed by Andreas Nilsson and Cyriak Harris respectively) we executed everything ourselves.

The characters are quite developed and even the chickens on the farm have back stories. How did you come up with their ‘personalities’?

The Pointless Collective webisodes are a spoof of the creative process itself, so the characters are pretty much an LSD-infused stereotype of creatives and what they do to come up with ideas.

We have Tortuga, the clever one who is so into books about the power of the mind and hypnosis that his office is a replica of Freud’s. There's Paco, who is the more artistic one and likes to express his ideas through audio-visual media such as paintings, sculptures and more recently, a dolphin translator. Finally there's Flaquita, the least creative but gets stuff done nonetheless (sometimes by dubious means, like stealing ideas from LosBrainos, the world’s most pointless ideas dealer).

When we were creating the back stories for each of them we were working very closely with Andreas Nilsson and each back story was tailored to make sense with the storyline of the webisodes.

How did Nilsson get on? Do you think he enjoyed it?

Andreas was not only the director but also a creative partner. The Swedish in general have a very good sense of humour and their films have that lovely sense of oddity, but when it comes to Nilsson, it’s all that times ten.

We have a very organic way of working with directors. We like them to contribute and add their special touch to projects and when we saw Andreas’ reel, we knew he'd contribute a lot to bringing the madness to life. Seeing him on set was so refreshing as he is so creative and comes up with the most random stuff.

Of all the live events, which was the most successful?

Definitely the shadow puppet show. It was the first time a stunt like that has taken place at half time during such a big football match. People were gobsmacked when the lights went down and the puppets appeared on the pitch. The Spanish are really up for stuff like that and they interacted with the puppets, cheered along and really seemed to enjoy the experience.

Did the guy in the polar bear suit (seen above) in Valencia not pass out from heat exhaustion?

Ha, luckily he didn’t. We had two guys alternating with a lot of water and ice cubes inside the igloo to cool down the temperature in between performances.

Was the client ever sceptical about the caign?

We never thought that Kraft would go for it. But luckily we have a very brave group of clients who know that modern brands need to create a dialogue through engaging content and they quickly realised that Pointless Fun was a caign platform that does just that. 

Where do you think the next Trident caign will go after this?

At the beginning of next year we’re launching the world’s most pointless gum flavour, the exquisite mixture between neon and kung fu. The Pointless Collective went on a round-the-world trip and met the master of all pointless flavours, a half-cat, half-geisha character called Lady Meow. But they got so carried away by the flavour they forgot to ask for the recipe.

What’s the most pointless fun thing you’ve ever done?

This short film: