Whataburger Hiring Campaign: “Funded by Friday”

Swng Productions partnered with ad agency, McGarrah Jessee, to bring their hiring campaign to life

The concept shows an employee in front of a Whataburger after a shift. Utilizing a quick change, the employee is shown wearing their uniform, then in a ready-to-wear outfit with their newest purchase. Our biggest challenge was executing this creative within a two-day schedule and filming on-location. Swng collaborated with director, Angela Herr, to accomplish this request.

To avoid shooting in a parking lot for an entire day during the hot Texas summer, we opted to take plate shots of a local Whataburger and film the talent on a studio greenscreen. This allowed us to stay within our production timeline, and we did not have to consider weather or exterior noise.

Pairing that with a camera cut from close to wide gives the illusion their outfit magically changes. Our fantastic post-production team made the edit look seamless in post.

Whataburger Hiring Campaign Video Production

To create the quick wardrobe change, talent placed their previous outfit on top of the “new” outfit and then pulled it away.

Pairing that with a camera cut from close to wide gives the illusion their outfit magically changes. Our fantastic post-production team made the edit look seamless in post.

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McJ wanted to juxtapose black and white editorial-style videos with Whataburger’s iconic logo.

Because these ads are squares and in black and white, our team was inspired by iconic medium format monochrome photography. Our lighting team used dramatic, high-contrast set-ups with texture pools of glowing light created by a light reflecting in a disco ball or a broken mirror.

For camera movement, we used a peewee dolly for a slow pull-out to add momentum to each cut. Art department shined with 7x unique indoor and outdoor set-ups and sourced various props from a turntable to guitars to countless plants.