Case Study Roto-Rooter 2023
The Thing About Elves
Roto-Rooter’s holiday spot goes full vintage stop-motion: 10 handmade characters, a North Pole built in our edit suite, and a toilet overflowing with bubble wrap. It took Gold at the Austin ADDYs.
For Roto-Rooter’s 2023 holiday spot, our friends at Bandolier asked The Bear for something that felt like it came straight out of a childhood TV special. The reference was the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: handmade characters, a snowy little world and that warm, slightly wobbly stop-motion charm.
There was just one twist. This was a holiday story about plumbing.
The creative mandate: nostalgia first, then the punchline.
Bandolier’s script took the cozy look of a vintage holiday special and pointed it somewhere those specials never went: the mischievous bathroom habits of elves. Santa loves his elves. Hard workers, cheery bunch. But as he confides to camera, “they can sure wreck a bathroom.” Cue a frantic plunger, a toilet stuffed with candy canes and one elf launched out of a stall by a geyser, until the Roto-Rooter man rolls up to the workshop in a branded snowcat to save Christmas.
The result is a spot that looks like a holiday memory and plays like a sketch.
- Handmade Characters
- 10
- Shoot Days
- 4
- ADDY + Judge’s Choice
- Gold
The Bear brought in director Rohitash “Ro” Rao, a multi-disciplinary artist whose work has won at the One Show, Clios, D&AD and Cannes. He’s also illustrated seven children’s books, so a world of hand-built holiday characters was right in his wheelhouse.
Ro didn’t just direct the spot. He worked closely with a fabricator to ensure every detail was just right, then animated the characters by hand, one frame at a time.
“When I got the script I realized the entire comedy — and point — of the commercial depended on the money shot of the toilet overflowing, so we spent the most amount of time getting that shot right. My set designer and I did countless tests of what materials would look and animate the best. The answer: bubble wrap!”
A North Pole in the edit suite.
Instead of renting a stage, we built a stop-motion studio inside The Bear’s own office. Our edit suite became a winter wonderland, with sets, lights and a camera rig taking over the room where we usually cut.
Ro and the fabricator built 10 characters from clay, wire, cardboard and styrofoam, then Ro shot them frame by frame over 4 days. Every blink, every waddle and every flush was a tiny adjustment by hand, then one more frame. The rest of the office learned to work around the set and leave Ro to his voodoo. He worked around the clock and basically lived in the edit suite.
That slow, handmade process is the point. You can feel the fingerprints on it, just like the specials it pays tribute to.
The payoff.
The :30 and a :15 cutdown launched in late November 2023 across cable, streaming and social, and picked up coverage in Adweek’s AgencySpy and MediaPost. At the Austin ADDY Awards in February 2024, it took home a Gold ADDY and a Judge’s Choice award in the Single Spot (up to 2:00) category, entered as “North Pole,” and advanced to the district competition. Not bad for a few weeks of elves in the edit bay.
Best of all, it became a tradition. Roto-Rooter was so happy with the spot that they’ve kept it running ever since: every holiday season, the elves come back to wreck the North Pole’s bathrooms all over again.
“When you come up with an idea that plays on nostalgia and needs to be executed just right to work, it’s always a bit of a gamble. Not only did The Bear nail the style we were looking for, Ro and the team infused the spot with little moments that helped make the spot memorable. The client gets excited about running it every year!”