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Paint commercials generally follow the same format and when Wattyl and its agency Brand Central wanted something ‘different’ to promote the new Solagard range the creative task fell to Graham Nunn of Funnel Productions and the team at The Lab Sydney.

Nunn brought a concept into The Lab that the team there quickly began to collaborate on.
“Solagard has always been about protecting your home from the sun’s harsh rays," says Nunn.

"Brand Central had suggested pulling all the various technologies that go into the paint together under the name ‘Total Protection Technology’ which was subsequently added to the can design. In addition to protecting your home from the sun, the technology helped the paint protect in all weather – hot, cold, wet etc."

So the new commercial was to be about the technology and to not just show the hot Australian sun – as all previous Solagard commercials had focused on – but to show all weather extremes.

The Lab’s creative director and co-director on the project, Garry Jacques said, “Wattyl had lots of ideas to choose from but they really liked the one that Graham had initially come up with. So Graham, our producer on the TVC Linda Lum and I brainstormed the idea. I then produced some boards which were presented to Wattyl and their agency Brand Central.”

The idea that Nunn and the team from the Lab had developed involved a warehouse with robotic machinery that was set up to test a house coated in new Wattyl Solagard. The tests or ‘torture tests’ as they became to be known, involved all the elements under the sun – literally.

Nunn said, “I thought from the beginning that there might be a need to “show” the technology – a cross-section of the paint surface at work, resisting the elements or something like that – and that part of the spot might involve 3D animation. Because the budget was tight, it made sense to talk with people who know what is and isn’t achievable in 3D and I thought of the Lab."

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