New Ambien CR Rooster Webisodes

The agency has gotten a lot of accolades for our work on Ambien CR with the "Rooster" campaign. We just recently extended the campaign to include a series of webisodes which are quite inventive. I'll let our lead account person, Sarah Hall, fill you in on how we got there.

Hope this finds you well -- Jim.

Take it away, Sarah:

There's something surreal about being on a shoot sitting in a dark room with crates of roosters surrounding you. But then again, there's something surreal about our Ambien CR "Rooster" campaign. And that's exactly why we have so much fun working on it! The exciting part is that we've just taken the campaign to a whole new level.

From this campaign's initial stages, or it's hatching, we knew we had stumbled upon a great icon to represent insomnia. The campaign received a lot of attention last year when it was introduced with a series of :15 teaser spots and followed up with a branded :60 (over a million hits to the microsite in less than 2 weeks!).

In addition to the blogs and articles written about the campaign, it has also been nice to have the Rooster acknowledged with industry awards. After about 10 months on air we feel he still has wings, and therefore have recently extended the campaign to include a new :60 commercial and a series of webisodes to demonstrate how your next day is effected as a result of the Rooster coming in the middle of the night.

The webisodes gave us the chance to really bring the Rooster to life, so to speak, and to dramatize even further its symbolism for the effects of insomnia.

Check them out on the brand's official site: www.ambiencr.com (click on the rooster on the left).

The development of this campaign is one I won't soon forget. I can't say I was ever familiar with Roosters before this, but in the last year we've all become somewhat experts on them. So if you find yourself in the company of a Rooster here are some tips we've picked up:

• They don't like working in the rain
• They won't respond to direction unless food is involved (usually smelly, living food)
• They crow when they want to crow
• They like to peck eyes

All in all they are actually pretty cool creatures. The more time we spent with them, the more we appreciated what marvelous animals they are. Even if they only have ability to learn one task therefore requiring multiple roosters for one commercial, they are innately pretty funny animals without even trying.

Make sure you check out their many talents in the webisodes.

Wishing you all a rooster free night!

- Sarah Hall, Account Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness