Though the script wasn’t perfect and the shoot took him 14 hours, Binghamton University pole vaulter Rory Quiller fared well in his screen debut earlier this month.
‘Some of the stuff probably isn’t stuff I’d be saying every day talking to my friends,’ Quiller joked. ‘There’s a line in there where I’m like ‘Oh, I’m the best,’ and I don’t really go around saying that.’
Quiller, the University’s most prominent individual athlete and the second-place finisher at last year’s NCAA Indoor Championships, is the focal point of a new 30-second commercial promoting BU.
In the ad, entitled ‘Advantage,’ the 6-foot-4 Quiller says that though some people say he has an advantage in his height, it’s his school that provides him an edge. Now a graduate student in the School of Management, Quiller had a 3.7 GPA as an undergraduate, which is displayed during the commercial.
‘I’ve looked at the commercial about 100 times conservatively ‘ I still get really thrilled to watch it,’ said Director of Athletics Joel Thirer. ‘Every time I watch it it takes on a deeper meaning to me. I interpret the commercial as it’s not really about Rory, it’s about Binghamton.’
The ad was a departure from productions of recent years. In an embrace of new media, the commercial made its debut on YouTube on Jan. 8. It has been viewed over 4,000 times.
‘I just felt that we had to make sure we were creative in how we gave people access, and having a viral electronic means to distribute made all the sense in the world,’ said Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Jason Siegel.
According to Siegel, Binghamton Athletics will continue to explore new mediums of advertisement, and there are plans for more YouTube videos.
‘Advantage’ was also the first University commercial to focus prominently on athletics.
‘We feel like athletics is the sizzle ‘ we’re the entertainment, we’re one of the opportunities for national exposure,’ Siegel said. ‘The steak is the academics. We felt like we had a lot of sizzle and a lot of steak.’
Thirer said that though a return to an athlete-centered commercial is possible in the future, it was not indicative of a trend or present planning.
The commercial debuted at the Events Center on Jan. 15 during the men’s basketball team’s 67-61 win over Stony Brook. It has also aired during telecasts, and could be seen nationally if the men’s basketball team makes at least the America East Conference finals.
‘Should good things happen to us come tournament time ‘ if we wind up on ESPN or, if everything goes well, CBS Sports ‘ we wanted to have a first-class production,’ Siegel said.
The commercial was born out of a meeting between Thirer, Siegel and Associate Vice President for Communications and Marketing Chris Ritter last summer.
Quiller was told of the idea after a practice during the fall semester.
‘Coach (Mike Thompson) just kind of called me after a workout one day,’ he said. ‘I was sitting there on the couch eating ‘ I was pretty psyched about it, but then I called my mom and she was ecstatic about it.’
BAZAAR Films Inc. submitted the winning proposal to produce the commercial, which was filmed at the Events Center on Nov. 17. Quiller’s day began at 9 a.m. with voice-over work, but it quickly got more strenuous.
After warming up four times to jump, he cramped up and teammate Kris Yelverton stepped in. Yelverton can be seen in the commercial clearing the bar.
‘Everybody’s teasing me about not being able to get the job done,’ Quiller said.
Though Quiller’s face is the closing image of the commercial, he said that does not serve to make him the ‘face’ of BU.
‘Our basketball team is first in the conference, our baseball team is probably going to rack it up this spring, so it’s tough to say that at all,’ Quiller said. ‘But pole vaulting probably made for a pretty cool commercial.’