Donate Life: The World's Biggest Asshole

Credits & Description:

Brand: Donate Life
Media: Online
Category: Public Interest, NGO
Agency: The Martin Agency
Geo: United States
Advertising Agency: The Martin Agency, New York, USA
Brand: Donate Life
Corporate Name of Sponsoring Client: Donate Life
Managing Director - Account Management: Chris Mumford
Agency Account Executives: Cori Kaylor/Carter Crenshaw
Group Account Director: Brad Higdon
Agency Account Director: Audyn O’Rourke
Agency: The Martin Agency, Richmond
Chief Creative Officer: Joe Alexander
Copywriter: Wade Alger/David Vogeleer/Brig White
Agency Producer: Steve Humble
Production Designer: Andrew Reznik
Group Project Management Supervisor: Danielle Cin
Production Company: Furlined
Director: Speck and Gordon
Senior Executive Producer: David Thorne
Executive Producers: LoveChild/Speck and Gordon/Diane McArter/Jay Wakefield
Producer: Greg Schultz
Line Producer: Jeff Cutter
Digital Producer: Jill McGrath
Editing Facility: Cut + Run
Editor: Graham Turner
Colour Company: The Mill
Colourist: Adam Scott
Sound Design Company: Lime Studio
Sound Designer: David Leinheardt
Music Production Company: Duotone
Managing Director - Duotone: David Leinheardt
Music Producers: Ross Hopman/Giovonni Lobato
Music Arrangers: Ross Hopman/Jordan Lieb
Music Composer: Coldplay
Music Performed By: Civil Brother
Narrator: Will Arnett
Description of the Project:
The overall purpose of this film was to get younger people to sign up for organ donation. We knew the typical tug at the heart strings approach would be invisible for this target. In fact they would sniff it out so fast it would work against us. So we didn’t even go there. In fact we went the opposite direction. Knowing they are skeptics, dark and just outright assholes at times we served them a giant pile of themselves, times ten. We gave them Coleman Sweeney: The World’s Biggest Asshole. An asshole 24/7, 365 days a year. Except for that one shining moment when he did something good. And that’s when he went from asshole to hero.
Published: August 2016
Synopsis:
The video opens to establish the main character, Coleman F. Sweeney. We follow Coleman in his seemingly average life and see just how big of an asshole he is—honking at old people walking across the street, shooting paintballs at dogs, throwing bottles of piss out of a truck window. He is a disgusting human no matter how you look at it. Everyone hates Coleman as much as he hates them.But then he has a heart attack, well subarachnoid hemorrhage, and dies. It is then that we see that Coleman was a registered organ donor. No one knows what inspired him to do it—but he did. Upon his death, his organs and tissues went on to save and improve the lives of many others. Coleman proved that even an asshole can save a life.
Script In English:
Open on a pair of swinging truck nuts hanging from the bumper of a pickup truck. Cut into the cab and see the driver. He’s looking down at his hand out frame and raises it holding a beer bottle he’s been peeing in and immediately tosses it out of the window.VO: This is a story about Coleman Sweeney. Coleman, in short, was an asshole.Coleman enters a laundromat. He stops a running machine, dumps out the laundry and inserts his own. He exits, but not before stealing a pair of women’s underwear off the floor.Everyone in his small town knew it. It wasn’t that he tried particularly hard to be unpleasant. It just seemed to come naturally to him.Coleman felt like the whole world owed him something.A long line of waiting women in a club hallway. Pan down and see they are waiting for the ladies room to be available. Coleman exits making a gesture and the women are visibly offended.Which caused him to regularly ignore the rules of a decent, acceptable society. An older woman is crossing the street slowly while Coleman is honking his horn.And he hated anything that got in his way. Coleman is shooting paintballs from his balcony towards a dog crapping on the patio below.And small animals. Coleman is handing out candy in his underwear to a group of shocked kids in costume.Even to children he was an asshole. He was, as they say, born to it.Inside of a diner where Coleman is arguing with a waitress. He throws a fry at her and puts his hand to his temple in pain then falls out of the booth to the floor. Patrons rush to him to see if he’s ok. Jump to him being wheeled out on a stretcher and the very same waitress finds his wallet on the floor. She looks through it discovering strip club coupons and notices his driver license. There is a small red heart on it.But then, the strangest thing happened. Something entirely unexpected. Coleman Sweeney…died. A brain aneurysm. Well, subarachnoid hemorrhage, to be more specific. And it came as he argued over whether extra fries should be included in a Dollar-99 Early Bird Breakfast, which was a typical Coleman Sweeney play. It was then that Sarah found something completely unexpected. Coleman Sweeney had registered to be an organ donor. Inside an ambulance where emergency personnel work diligently to save his life. Then cut to inside a hospital. Coleman is on a bed with tubes going into him laying there unconscious as doctors tend to him.Nobody knew what caused Coleman to do it, but there it was. Generous and majestic. The curtain around Coleman’s bed closes as you faintly hear the heart rate monitor flatline.And that was the day that Coleman went from asshole…to hero. A tight shot of a doctor carrying an organ cooler down a hospital hallway. Cut to a smiling man lying in a hospital bed surrounded by his family.You see, his liver went to Stan, a father of two. Another shot of a doctor carrying an organ cooler down a hospital hallway. Cut to a young woman teaching a room full of kids.His heart went to Miranda Morgan, who went on to teach for 25 more years.A man learning to walk again with a physical therapist inside her office.And his tendons went to Staff Sergeant Donahue, who was able to walk again, and would never need to be pushed across the street by his physical therapist. Close shot of the dog we saw earlier. He’s on the patio again, but this time an older woman comes out onto the patio as well and picks up the poop he just made as the dog runs around happily.And in a moment of small-world irony, his corneas went to his 82-year-old next-door neighbor so that she could finally see the crap that her dog made in the side yard and pick it up.A montage of Coleman doing asshole things. Handing a kid a cigarette, throwing change at a stripper and yelling at people from his truck.Yes, in life Coleman was a bona fide asshole, 365 days a year, 24/7. Wide shot of a gravesite. Stan, the liver recipient, and his family are there leaving flowers.But in death, well — let’s just raise our middle fingers and shout, “Up yours, Coleman Sweeney! You’re not an asshole. Anymore.” SUPER: even an asshole can save a life.DONATE LIFE® (LOGO)registerme.org#cansavealife
Entry Summary:
People are usually only prompted to become an organ donor when they get and renew their drivers license, but with license renewals moving online, failure to register people during their initial DMV visit means they may never think about becoming a donor again.It’s one signature. One time. But getting that signature from a missing audience (millennial men) means trying new ways of communication—Enter “The World’s Biggest Asshole.”