The Work That Made Me: The Bonnan Brothers
Creating video together since Ben was nine and Zach was five, the Bonnan Brothers know each other like the back of their mom’s hand. As directors, creative directors, and multiple Cannes Lions winners who’ve worked for clients like Skittles, Cars.com, and more, this humour-mixed-with-heart duo believes the final product is only as good as the results it creates for clients.
As directors and creative directors at our new collective, Nimble Beast, we talk a lot about the ads from our shared childhood that have made us into the seriously goofy brother duo we are. One spot that has really stayed with us is Budweiser’s Super Bowl Frog ad. We’re two brothers out of a total of six kids and we still remember being at the dinner table the next day re-enacting that spot with one of our other brothers. “Bud.” “Weis.” “Errr.” What we love about this spot to this day is the simplicity of the idea, and the completely client-centric storytelling. They somehow found a way to say the brand’s name about 20 times in 30 seconds and made it endlessly entertaining.
The ad platform that made us want to get into the industry…We’ve both always been video driven no matter the channel. As kids we made movies together every summer, writing skits and filming comedy bits…ooh that rhymed. So as we step into our roles at Nimble Beast, doing both directing and creative directing, we’re more and more in love with video’s ability to harness comedic timing, and the puzzle of doing so in 6, 15, or 30 seconds.
The creative work that we continually revisit and study is the Skittles “Taste the Rainbow” campaign. The way Skittles goes absolutely abnormal, yet keeps the product at the core of their storytelling, how brave their brand of weird is, yet how the oddities follow a specific logic, and how the colour and set designs of their worlds are so precise and purposeful. It reminds us to always stay on the right side of Nimble Beast’s motto, “Be Dull or Be Dangerous.” We’ve entered into this venture Nimble Beast with really exciting partners and are finally getting the opportunity to dip our toes in directorial work, which only enhances our chops as Creative Directors and vice versa.
Our first professional project as a brother duo was “Claude, a Hamster Scratching Story” for the Lottery. To this day, its style still embodies what we strive for in our work, and the type of work we’d love to do more of for Nimble Beast — humour mixed with heart. The story is simple, a women’s pet hamster scratches all of her boyfriend’s possessions to smithereens. So, as an olive branch, the boyfriend buys the hamster a Lottery scratch off ticket to keep its paws otherwise entertained. And while the storyline is simple, we went deep on details. From the girlfriend’s hamster-obsessed backstory, to the hamster’s cage itself, to the Édith Piaf track that scores the piece, we made sure we knew the logic behind the hyperbolic hamster and created work the Lottery still airs every holiday season.
The piece of work that made us so angry that we vowed to never make anything like *that* has to be a logo on a public bathroom’s towel dispenser. We were at a restaurant and our friend (a designer) hated the logo design on this bathroom dryer so much, he couldn’t resist punching it…and hurting his hand. “How could anyone be so careless with something they put into the world?” While we don’t remember the specific logo, we remember promising each other to always put enough passion and care into what we create so that it doesn’t make anyone want to destroy it with their bare knuckles.
The ad that still makes us jealous is “Mr. W,” by Epuron clean energy. It’s the story of a very large, very misunderstood man who constantly annoys people who can’t understand why he tussles their hair, breaks their umbrellas, or throws sand in their face. It turns out, he is a personification of the wind, and someone from Epuron finally uses him (the wind) for good with their wind-powered turbines. The casting, the world building, the storytelling, it’s all at the very top of the game, and the way the reveal makes the brand the hero in a comedic, yet heartfelt way makes the commercial difficult to beat. It really sets a bar for the type of storytelling we aim to achieve at Nimble Beast.
The creative project that changed our career has to be the three Cars.com spots we made with Tarsem (The Cell) and DP, Rachel Morrison (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther). Tarsem’s focus on subtle, understated comedic delivery, and Morrison’s creative use of lighting that both sets the mood and screams the brand are lessons that we take with us to every set we step foot on. As we begin to explore directing more, we can’t help but feel incredibly lucky to have worked with such talented directors and filmmakers who took us under their wing. When you work alongside collaborative directors like Kenny Herzog, Jordan Brady, Matt Smukler and more, you get to attend film school on the ground floor with masters at their craft.
The work we’re proudest of has to be our two spots for the Illinois Lottery, “Claude,” our hamster commercial, and “Rene,” our cat commercial. Most importantly, these were the two pieces that brought us together as a brother team. We also believe deeply that the work we make should not only be creative, but that it should create results for clients. “Claude” sold out the Illinois Lottery’s holiday tickets in record speed and for the first time in over a decade. “Rene,” which came out the following year, went on to break those sales records. When you’re happy with the final creative products and the final results, that’s the ultimate win for us.
We were once involved in a pitch that we didn’t believe in, and it makes us cringe to this day. Since the pitch, we’ve decided to only take on projects that excite us, because if you don’t believe in something, the work suffers. But if it piques your passion, meaningful, exciting, ground-breaking work is possible. It’s one of the reasons we’re so excited about being part of Nimble Beast.
As a company, we will only take on client work that we feel we can push and bring to the highest level of excellence. Nimble Beast will only work with people who are kind and open to pushing the creative boundaries of their brands, and taking some calculated risks. That’s something we can get behind. Great people? Great work? Pretty great in our book.
A recent project that excited us was getting on Jimmy Fallon for a babysitting stunt we concocted for Ace Hardware. Basically, Ace helped parents get some time to do DIY home projects by literally babysitting the customer’s kids. Ben and I are both parents, and we know it’s near impossible to get a DIY home project done when you first and foremost have to worry about keeping a toddler in your house alive. Jimmy Fallon picked up the stunt and it was fun to see the work get so much national attention.
Ace took a risk, and it paid off with record breaking sales. This type of creative risk taking that reaps rewards is exactly why we helped create Nimble Beast, it’s how we and our clients feed on risk together.
