Adweek‘s “Adfreak” section gave a shout-out to Wieden + Kennedy New York’s ESPN ad, which shows us fake spots for shampoo, allergy medicine and a family restaurant – all with the attendant “poppy” looks – and then takes us “behind the scenes” to the commercial actors in “real life,” all concerned with their fantasy football picks. Not only was the concept “meta,” as “Adfreak” describes it, but the look, finished by Tim Masick at Company 3 New York, had to also be self-referential.

For the spots within the spots, Masick says, “We added all the layers that we would do for that kind of commercial. So that means giving the sky that look like it was shot through a deep polarizer or going in and enhancing the chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks.  I’ve done a lot of those spots and you take some of those things and do them here. Maybe you bring up the texture of clouds or emphasize the golden tones of a field.”

Then when we go to “real life,” he went the opposite direction. “You still direct the viewer’s eye with a little shading here or there but you bring down the overall contrast and the strongly saturated colors. You don’t want something gray and lifeless but you want it to feel much more ‘real’. Adweek called the spot ‘meta,’ and it also took a ‘meta’ approach to color correction.”