You know you’ve had great success when your fictional characters are asked to advertise real-life products. For several years, the “stars” holding Rick and morty They’ve been in the mall for original commercials promoting a wide range of products, from Carl’s Jr. burgers to Playstation 5, video games and … well it’s pretty endless, how many different things have they seen on the Adult Swim show to promote, as you can see in the build below:
In addition to voicing the characters of Rick and Morty, the show’s co-creator Justin roiland revealed to Collider in a recent interview that he also writes these commercials, with a specific focus on making sure that while promoting an upcoming movie or Old Spice body spray, the ads remain in the anarchic spirit of the show.
“When I’m writing those commercials, I try to scoff at the concept of advertising and try to stay true to the tone of the show and the characters,” he said. “It can be really difficult with some partners because it’s not like they come to us and say, ‘Hey, here are all the pitches we have. Which one do you guys want to do?’ They just tell us, ‘Hey, we made a deal with Pringles.’
While Roiland is not involved in the bargaining (he said, “I’d like to be, though. I’d like to be in the room negotiating those rates, because I think they’re selling less intellectual property. I think giving it away”), he uses his post of writer to do one thing:
My goal in writing those commercials is to try to stay true to the characters, to try to keep Rick cynical. Rick is the type of person you would see through any damn advertisement and who these big corporations are, all corporations that weigh on sociopolitical issues. It’s so fucking ridiculous. It’s funny to me, and Rick is someone who would see right through that shit. It’s like they just want money. That’s all they care about. So I’m trying to keep all of that in mind as I write these commercials. It’s kind of a tightrope act, especially when you send yourself to the ad agency, they show it to the client and you’re going to get notes from both of them, and you’ll try to maintain that level of cynicism and stay true to the characters and the character. same time implement those notes. It is a nightmare in some cases.
Before a thriving career in animation, Roiland actually had some experience doing commercials, specifically, a series of commercials for the Mantica, California Replay Records store, which he produced between 2001 and 2003 and you can watch now on Vimeo. “They were running them all over the Central Valley. People knew about those commercials. It was really cool. I would meet people and they would say, ‘Oh my God, you did those commercials.
He continued: “It was a fun time and I was thinking about weird ads. How do you play in this space in an innovative way? It’s been fun doing those ads because it’s like I’m playing an ad agency that writes these ads and presents weird stuff. for the market, and they come up with ideas that I’m suggesting to help them sell their product, I guess. ”
One formula Roiland landed on for writing these ads was to make sure Rick, being the smart mad scientist that he is, was aware of what was going on:
For a while I was doing this where Rick breaks into Morty’s room with a megaphone. I kept coming back to that part, and he has all these anthropomorphized versions of the products that they are trying to sell. What made that work for me was, it’s like, ‘Oh, Rick is in the shot and he’s torturing Morty with it too.’ There is something really funny about it. You are justifying this sale by counting money. Or you can say that you are done in the shot, and then you are also using it as a means to torture Morty … It’s all just an ad for some product, but anyway.
It may not be the reason Roiland wanted to do the show, but it’s one aspect of the Rick and morty phenomenon you enjoy, even if you don’t necessarily know what to do with it. When I mentioned to him that not many people can say that they have written a Super Bowl commercial, he agreed, noting that “That was very surreal. I feel like all the major events we’ve had in the history of the show, I have had this strange dissociation from their reality.The reality of the Super Bowl commercial, the Simpsons couch joke we did, that’s another one that’s super surreal and something like … I have this weird dissociation from the reality of those things. It’s weird for sure. ”
For much more on conducting Rick and mortyWe look forward to our full interview with Roiland soon. The show returns for season 5 on Sunday June 20 on Adult Swim.
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