Packed into a conference room at downtown Richmond ad agency Elevation in late February, Aaron Dotson and Frank Gilliam worked through a pile of talent evaluations from an audition the previous day.
Dotson had pictures up on his laptop and matched them with the stack of papers Gilliam sorted through. Art director C.J. Hawn manned a video camera hooked up to a flat-screen television on the wall of their Main Street offices.
The Elevation executives were looking at the 77 people who had auditioned the previous two days for 24 open spots in a new commercial the agency was creating for the Virginia Credit Union.
Although a commercial lasts just 30 seconds, creating one is a labor-intensive process that takes months to complete.
Peyton Rowe, an advertising professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said television spots have many moving parts.
"Talent, locations, equipment and labor have to be hired and scheduled if those resources aren't in house," Rowe said. "And, like any film, video or time-based communication, a lot more footage is shot, let's say eight hours' worth, for example, that gets whittled down into a 30-second spot."
At Elevation, Dotson found a reason to keep most everyone who auditioned for the credit union commercial. Gilliam was quick to dismiss all but the most talented and move on.
Dotson and Gilliam, who were named Richmond Ad Persons of the Year last year, have been business partners for about 10 years.
The auditions before a panel of judges and the casting session for the commercials were a little different than others they'd worked on throughout their careers, Dotson said. They weren't looking at professional actors, singers and dancers as they usually did when casting a commercial. Instead, they were looking at Virginia Credit Union customers.
Elevation's new campaign for the Chesterfield County-based credit union is a takeoff on popular television shows such as "American Idol," "Dancing with the Stars" and "Glee."
The two spots for Virginia Credit Union, the first of which debuted last week, star the credit union members who sing and dance to an original song created for the campaign.
Members registered online for a casting call Feb. 21 at 9WG Studios on West Grace Street.
Their path to TV fame would be quick — 13 days after the auditions began, they recorded the songs, followed six days later by a night of choreography, and then a day later by 12 hours of shooting the commercial.
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Last fall, Elevation was tasked with coming up with an energetic campaign for the Virginia Credit Union.
For the next several weeks, Dotson, Gilliam and their team brainstormed ideas to present to the Virginia Credit Union's marketing department.
The credit union had featured customers in three previous ad campaigns, the first in 2006.
"We really like to showcase our members," said Glenn Birch, the credit union's public and media director.
As part of its seven-year relationship, Elevation and the credit union review the marketing plan each November. That process includes coming up with creative approaches for the account, Dotson said.
"We told Elevation that we wanted to do something that would stand-out from other advertising and get attention … (and) an approach that would appeal to a younger, more diverse audience in addition to our core audience," said Deb Wreden, vice president for marketing and product development.
The credit union also wanted the approach to include social media.
"A spot that propels the message of the brand successfully and does it uniquely, cutting through the clutter and resonating with their audience, is a successful piece," VCU's Rowe said. "This is incredibly hard."
In all, Elevation pitched eight campaign ideas.The last was a takeoff of "Glee," the Fox hit about a high school show choir, which Hawn and copywriter Lindsay Sterling had proposed.
"It was the very last one, and we said, 'You're not going to like this one,' " Dotson said he told the credit union marketing officials. But "they more than liked it."
Birch said the idea, although very different from anything the credit union has done before, has been embraced by executives and its board of directors. Making it easier to embrace such a different approach was the Virginia Credit Union's relationship with the ad agency.
"I'm not sure we would have done this with another agency," Birch said.
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"Generating the big idea is what takes the most time, patience and innovation," said Rowe of VCU. "Executing the idea in the various formats is relatively easy in comparison."
With a green light from the credit union, Elevation went to work at the beginning of the year.
Before they could start work on casting for the spots, the agency wrote 16 songs, which Virginia Credit Union's marketing team narrowed down to eight.
The agency wrote so many songs "because we wanted to let the talent dictate the songs we used," Dotson said.
With the songs chosen, the agency and credit union began a three-month trek that won't end until the second spot is choreographed and filmed April 8.
The two-day casting began Feb. 21 when credit union members came out for two days of tryouts.
The amateur performers ran the gamut of diversity in age, race and professional background. One singer had never sung in public before. Another had previously appeared onstage in New York. Many had sung in church choirs.
The Elevation team narrowed the list of performers and, along with the credit union, got down to 23 singers. The 24th was picked by fans of Virginia Credit Union's Facebook page.
The songs were recorded March 5. The directors and choreographers taught the performers their dance steps. The amateur cast members spent nearly 14 hours rehearsing and shooting the commercial during two days at Richmond's Theater IV.
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Four months after pitching the original idea, Dotson and Birch were back at Elevation 10 days ago viewing the final edit of the first spot.
The final version of the first commercial features 12 credit union members between ages 15 and 61 singing and dancing to a tune written by Dotson.
"It was tough, but we're really happy with how it came out," Birch said.
Elevation and Virginia Credit Union will do it all again April 8 and 9 with a different song — a song about breaking up as opposed to the upbeat tune of the first spot — and a whole new cast.
They expect for the first spot to be a hit, much like the television shows they emulated.
"The great irony," Dotson said, "is that I hate musicals."
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