Jaguar is pulling out all the stops to promote its first new sports car since 1974, and that includes releasing a 13-minute ad/short film starring Homeland's Damian Lewis.
Lewis, who told the Hollywood Reporter that the Ridley Scott produced gig "fell into [his] lap," was excited to play what he saw as a quirky British character, especially considering that "There's not a lot of comedy in Homeland."
Filmed in Chile — "As a redhead, I stood there occasionally thinking, 'Wow, I really wasn't designed for the desert.'" Lewis told THR — "Desire" is about a man who's about to deliver the $92,000 F-Type but gets embroiled in a gangster's altercation with his wife. (Obviously leading to a chase in the desert).
Lana Del Rey provides a soundtrack with a song called "Burning Desire," which was exclusively written for the car's launch.
Although advertisers have been known to release short films rather than ads, sometimes cutting longer online versions down to TV commercial length, the sweet spot is usually around three and a half minutes. This was the length of Prada's short by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola and Cartier's short that went viral last Christmas.
But going longer isn't unheard of.
Fallon helped launch BMW Films in 2001. A series of approximately 10-minute branded short films, starring Clive Owen as the Driver, were released online to a general audience.
George Bryant of the Brooklyn Brothers, which created the short with RSA Films, told Ad Age that this is "not BMW all over again ... This is drama and narrative -- we were all on board to make something different."
Bryant continued that the Jaguar film also differed in terms of its marketing strategy, building a supposed $9 million in unpaid media buzz by creating online chatter months before it premiered.
Watch the ad below and let us know if you saw it through to the end:
SEE ALSO: This TV commercial was filmed entirely on an iPhone 5 >
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