When it comes to making commercials, Western-wear manufacturer Tecovas is going cowboy.
Rather than spend its marketing budget crafting only the usual series of traditional 30- or 60-second video ads, the direct-to-consumer company decided to fulfill some bigger ambitions The company is releasing a 13-minute short film that features Michael Shannon and Ryan Bignham, among others, with narration by Sissy Spacek. “Love Letter to Texas” doesn’t have a lot of hard sell, but executives at the company hope it will create a different sort of connection with current and potential customers.
“This is an opportunity to just entertain an audience. There’s no product placement. There are no logos. There is no reference to products or the brand,” says Scott Ballew, vice president of creative at Tecovas, during a recent interview. “There are boots and hats and shirts in there from the brand, but there are no overt shots of them or mention of them or anything that we would have done differently if we were just writing an independent short film.”
This isn’t the first time Tecovas has taken a maverick position. In February, the Western-apparel company ran a commercial during the Super Bowl that appeared only on Peacock that had already streamed frequently on YouTube and other media venues. Executives felt the ad, which also evoked a Western milieu, would be more authentic than tapping a celebrity or another of the usual Big Game marketing staples
More advertisers have chosen in recent years to back full-fledged pieces of content that look nothing like the typical Madison Avenue product. A+E Networks has crafted humorous programs for KFC and Chilli’s that are meant to emulate the sudsy romantic movies of its Lifetime cable network. Pepsi created a game show that ran on Fox. By taking out the clear nods to commerce and branding, however, Tecovas hopes its short movie will lasso consumers with a vibe, not a value proposition.
“Because there wasn’t some big brother looking over my shoulder, the process felt very organic,” says Jeff Nichols, the director of the film, who is also know for movies such as “Loving” and “Midnight Special.” “There’s no edit in there and there’s no decision in there that wasn’t mine,” he adds. “It doesn’t happen very often.”
Tecovas is betting that consumers will be interested in a longer piece of content in an era when many marketers worry they are oversaturating viewers with traditional commercials that run again and again during the streaming experience. “Love Letter” isn’t trying to snatch quick hits of attention with short cuts of video or viral antics, says Nichols. “The scenes “play out in these really long sequences,” he says, which are meant to evoke classic films about Texas such as 1963’s “Hud” or 1956’s “Giant.” “To me, it’s kind of the opposite of anything anyone’s doing right now, especially in the ad space.”
The goal is to spark a longer-term relationship, says Ballew. “People know when they’re being sold to. And sometimes they want to be sold to. They’re looking for a specific product, they want to go get the information, they want to know what it is, where it is,” he says. The movie “is something that I think stays with you and grows, and you’ve kind of become part of the tribe for life if it’s something that resonates with you.”
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