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News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC) March 22, 2008 CHAPEL HILL -- If Andrew Zenn hits it big as a filmmaker, he may owe his success to laundry deterget.
The 17-year-old's entry in Tide to Go's "My Talking Stain" contest has landed Zenn and his high school cast and crew in the competition's Top 10. Zenn could learn next week whether he wins and gets to see his 30-second ad air on prime-time television. "No matter what happens, it was just awesome," the Chapel Hill High senior said Friday. Tide to Go is a stain-removal stick. The actual commercial for it -- in which a jabbering stain interrupts a job candidate's interview -- was No. 1 in YouTube's 2008 Super Bowl advertising poll. This year's 63 ads received a total of 900,000 votes. Its success led Tide to invite filmmakers from across the country to submit their own 30-second spots. You can vote for your favorite until Monday at www.mytalkingstain.com. Zenn is tech-savvy. He was in sixth grade when he designed the Web site for the Bouncing Bulldogs jump-rope team, his mother, Susan Zenn, said. But the Tide to Go commercial was his first "real production." "I had to rent equipment. I had to get legal papers signed," he said. "There was a lot of pressure." The spot, "Sorry to Keep You Waiting," took four hours to shoot and 25 hours to edit. That's almost 30 hours for 30 seconds of commercial. And if the results smack "Juno"-ish, that's cool with Zenn. His story shows two teenagers on a date, when a stain on the girl's dress starts spouting gibberish only the boy can hear. The girl keeps talking. The guy keeps staring at her chest, and, well, you get the picture. "We were really pleased," said friend Match du Toit, 18, who helped write and edit. "It was definitely what we were looking for." Zenn counts the "Matrix" movies and "Wedding Crashers" among his favorite flicks. Steven Spielberg is his favorite director. Of the 250-plus Tide contest entries, Zenn said he's the only teen to make the top 10. "Some of the other people, they've made ads for Adidas," he said. "So it's pretty cool."
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