Ready Before You Are

FIGS came to us with a big idea: let’s blow up an F1 car. After we picked our producers up off the floor, we thought to ask, “Why?!” Turns out FIGS is on a journey to celebrate all those “Awesome Humans” who dedicate their lives to serving their communities as healthcare professionals. In the next chapter of that story, FIGS wanted to hone in on the high-risk world of F1 to promote their latest FIGS EXTREMES product line tailored to the needs of those working in the most dangerous environments.

We jumped right in, kicking off what would turn out to be a nearly year-and-a-half long adventure with FIGS to produce one of the most highly technical AVs we’ve ever created. Step one, lock in a creative concept and story arc for exactly how and why our F1 car would bite the dust. We drafted three different ideas to present to FIGS, each approaching the narrative, treatment and tone in a unique way.

Ultimately, this project would call on every discipline INDUSTRY has at our disposal — from strategy and brand narrative work to 2D and 3D design and fabrication. There were triumphs and defeats, joy and tears, lots of long nights and revisions to the plan.

With such a big creative problem to solve, there are bound to be plenty of hiccoughs along the way. The first (and last) blaring question mark was, of course, budget. It’s expensive to do anything with an authentic F1 car, much less the logistics of destroying it and filming that destruction for a 30-second spot. The client clearly needed this as part of their hero AV, so we were just going to have to get creative to make it happen. Thankfully, our Industrial Design team is more than up to the task and feasts on ‘impossible’ creative asks.

Messaging was another piece of the puzzle for this project. The AV we were creating would be the flagship creative for a line called FIGS EXTREMES. Along with a script, we needed to land a tagline and full messaging hierarchy for the product line that would also pay off the AV. Copywriters, report.

We locked a concept with FIGS that highlighted the pre-race day preparation processes of their two hero doctors, Dr. Luke Bennett and Dr. Elina Haukipuro. We would show how they prepped, body and mind, for race day. Then, at the moment of crisis, we’d show how their training became instinct, allowing them to stay locked in and ready to act without a moment’s hesitation.

We would tell this story through a VO script read by Dr. Luke, flashback sequences to their training, the moment of the crash and subsequent fire, and the actions they take to save the life of the driver in the burning vehicle.

But that brings us back to square one. How were we going to pull off a realistic F1 crash on a shoestring budget? Through the power of industrial design, of course. Our ID team designed an F1 body and printed it in studio, piece by piece. This cart-sized puzzle was assembled on a wooden chassis over many painstaking, near all-nighters, and we couldn’t be more proud of the results. In fact, the completed model lives in a place of honor in our studio as a testament to thrifty thinking and the brave (and sleepy) artists who made it happen.

We got permission to film at Portland International Raceway, allowing us to stage the crash on a real track with few restrictions.

Our 3D designer rendered the explosion and fire and doctored the track and in-car footage to add incredible layers of detail that even the most discerning and pedantic F1 fans could appreciate.