Without today’s connectivity and home internet, millions of Americans can’t easily apply for jobs, work remotely or access vital healthcare information. Technologically, it’s like they’re stuck in the 1980s. Our brief: Tell the story of these Americans stuck in the ‘Digital Divide’ to those watching The Masters – a prestigious golfing event watched by an audience too affluent to be impacted by this issue or even know about it at all. We also needed to highlight AT&T’s life-changing financial commitment to connecting every American. And communicate all of this in a way so unique and compelling able that our Masters audience couldn’t help but take notice.

Our colour had to instantly transport our audience to the 1980s from their memories.

So, we lovingly overthought each of our MANY colour grades. First, we graded our digital footage with excessive technicolour saturation, so it would survive what was coming next. We then manually printed our digital film onto tape.

Then we sourced one of the only VHS scanners left on Earth, and ran our newly-printed tape through it. This gave us a perfectly-degraded look.

Then we re-graded the muted footage to regain colour saturation The VHS scanner posed unique “opportunities” (PROBLEMS) for us. Quality loss was a risk. Chromatic aberration had to be carefully corrected. Each scan produced a totally different grade, requiring re-grading with a bespoke approach for cohesion.

We had to ask our clients if we could please destroy the footage we captured together. It was quite a process, and we loved it.

It was our goal to have our AT&T commercial for The Masters’ audience to also be seen by eyeballs all over the country, and we certainly achieved that. The Masters’ audience loved it, non-golf-players loved it, social media loved it and incredibly soon after launch we reached 100 million impressions. The Masters’ old-school reputation was for once not the focus, our work outperformed the previous year’s campaign and competing campaigns by 51%, our placements during the final round of the 2024 Masters performed 64% above the brand’s primetime average, a 66% improvement overall, and brand perception was, and is still, on a steep rise.