 At the beginning of COVID-19, a lot of brands were asking ourselves, how and where do we incorporate, you know, ourselves into this conversation? Matt Dillon. So I work for Progressive. I am the business leader of Creative Development and I lead our internal agency in which we have branded or call ourselves 96. I'm Sean McBride and I'm the Chief Creative Officer of Arnold Worldwide in Boston. What would you say is our worldwide's role in making these spots? Flow character is a character this agency dreamed up about 14 years ago. Okay, everybody, bundle brainstorm. Since then, with our partners at Progressive, we've made, I think almost 250 spots at this point, developed a whole other cast of characters with her and are generally speaking involved in every aspect of writing and executing the campaign. So pretty fundamental role. Yeah, so their primary focus is on the 30s. So we use Arnold, they can do obviously much more, but their focus is on mass. So I think of radio, print, obviously TV. From a 96 perspective, the focus was more on the social digital paid aspect. Can you just tell us a little bit of what the spots are and kind of how they came about, the idea behind them? We have these these crew of progressive employees that we've been following their lives for quite a long time in the working from home campaign. We just sort of imagined their lives reflecting the lives that we've all been having for the last six plus months. How did the shoot compare to normal shoots? It functioned a lot like a regular shoot, which is you have your cast with you, you run a scene, we're running them all in real time. But teams in Zoom was on so they could see their their crew. And then the other person who was on teams and scene was the director. So we ran scenes how we would normally run scenes. We did, you know, singles, we knew we would have single coverage on certain people. We also ran full scenes the way that you would run a wide if you were on set. There were things that were hard. I mean, you know, everybody's got a neighbor who likes to weed whack nearby or garbage truck rolls through everybody's neighborhood. So that stuff we can't avoid. And that certainly made the day a little bit more complicated. But generally speaking, it ran more like one of our regular shoots than you would think. You know, we the learning curve was steep. We figured it out and we kind of jumped in with both feet. But it was that kind of it was the first. And anytime it's the first, you're going to have to work out, you know, kings and work through some challenges. Was there more urgency to put these ads out and put them together quicker than normal? Speed was a priority, right? If you want to be relevant, you have to, you know, work faster and harder. So in that regard, from a normal production that may take, you know, three to four months, this was condensed down into less than a month. I think from concepting to actual on air date, it was about 26 and a half days. What equipment did you all use? What equipment did the actors use? So we used a video conferencing similar to this that we had, you know, Brendan on and he was able to direct them come on and off. But they literally recorded themselves on an iPhone. And then in post, we were able to stitch that together to make it look like a video conference. We sent a little light kit. They set up themselves. We did like, you know, art department stuff, which is basically just, you know, background moving things back around in their back of their homes and maybe changing a little bit of the decor here and there to make it what we like. But they were doing that themselves, them or their family. And, you know, crew, the crew portion of it in their homes was non-existent. Was there any thought given to each person's background, like their house, matching their character somehow? Yeah, we did a little bit to make sure that the background didn't feel inconsistent with our characters. With Jamie, for example, he has a very fancy house. So making sure that it aligned and luckily it did. So yes, we absolutely took into play each character. Jamie was first. Jamie is best. And we're all about building and expanding upon characters. So their background, the art on the wall, the refrigerator all plays into that. In the spots, there was some points with some static. How do you approach making it too polished versus very real? There are a couple moments where that thing that happens on these platforms where someone sticks for a moment, then it catches back up. Can you guys see me? Offers a moment, nowhere you can theoretically, you can cut. But I do remember we used it a few times. Throw somebody up just for a second to create a cut point where there otherwise wasn't one to get from one bit that we'd like to another. And that protects our customers 24-7. Sorry I'm late, everybody. Any elements of this experience that you'll kind of carry forward into normal production? Assuming there's normal production again? Since this, we've done, I would say, at least five or six for this client. I think it was a great first experience of that. Figuring out takes and giving direction properly from afar and figuring out the most efficient way to do that. I think we learned some things that we brought with us. And how has the response been to the ads? I think people sighed relief a little bit when they saw our ads and said, okay, someone's making some jokes during this period. Someone's getting comfortable with this way of life a little bit. I think that felt nice. And then I do think we got some credit in the world for doing it as quickly as we did. How do you kind of keep the energy level up and keep that momentum going when everyone is so remotely working? It was almost like a breath of fresh air for our actors. Again, because this is what their core is. But they're so used to reading the line 10, 15 different times. Okay, change the camera angle, read the line. In this way, it was just kind of let them play. It's a really unified crew. It's a really a positive set. We have wonderful engaged clients. So I think it's just the group is an optimistic and positive group. And so it wasn't that hard to keep it up.