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A Look Inside Plymouth Rock's 'Bostonians' Campaign
It's like Three's Company on the Charles River. But not
Any time you’re referencing Three’s Company in a client presentation, you’re winning.
The assignment was a familiar one, creatively. But challenging from a production standpoint.
Plymouth Rock Assurance needed a TV campaign to highlight their New England sports sponsorships with the Bruins, Patriots and Red Sox. Great assignment! But we didn’t have the luxury of shooting individual ads covering each team. So, how do you get baseball, basketball and hockey messages to comfortably co-exist, in an ongoing construct, over many executions?
We knew we’d be able to feature the logos and mascots. Likely a Patriots cheerleader. Possibly, Bruins hockey announcer Jack Edwards for a cameo. Maybe a player—at some point. Those were the ingredients we had to cook with.
As we dove into the concept phase, we thought, “What if we had characters that represent each team? And have them all, inexplicably, live together, In a house, where they talk about nothing but sports and insurance? Could that work?”
We mulled classic sitcoms like Three’s Company, Seinfeld and Welcome Back Kotter. And even Adult Swim’s internet smash “Too Many Cooks.”
The sitcom format could allow all these different characters—”the gang,” in genre parlance—to-intermingle with no rhyme or reason. That seemed like a fun, conceptually sound solution. Plus, few cities are more sports-obsessed than Boston. Hockey fans are football fans are baseball fans. So, even though they might see the commercials during a Bruins game, they’d be happy with a Patriots or Red Sox reference. Ultimately, we decided to put every sport in every spot.
Of course, if you’re doing a sitcom, you need a theme song. We didn’t have the budget for a bespoke music composition. But fortunately, I’m an ASCAP songwriter and the team trusted me to take a swing at it. And I had my longtime collaborator Tom Polce (of the legendary Boston band Letters to Cleo) produce the music with jazzy genre flourishes.
We produced six spots in the first campaign (“Season One” in 2022). They rolled out over the course of baseball, football and hockey. The feedback from the client, teams and fans was positive. A year later, they greenlit “Season Two.” At that point, we added Bruins defenseman and Norris Trophy finalist Hampus Lindholm.
Now, any creative who’s ever shot athletes will tell you: It’s fun and exciting to meet the players, but it can be tough to get good performances. And “The Bostonians” format required dialogue in every spot. On top of this, Hampus is Swedish. English isn’t even his native tongue. Uh-oh, right? Well, actually, no. Hampus is pretty darn hilarious, personable, open to direction and was happy to do the necessary all the takes over a full day of shooting. If this hockey thing doesn’t work out for him, he might have a solid “Plan B” on camera. With Mr. Lindholm’s presence adding to the festivities, “Season Two” felt even bigger and better than the first.
A simple advertising truth: It’s extremely hard to a) find a construct that works over many, many executions and b) have a client stick with that construct over time.
But our team at Plymouth Rock—Brad Baker and Amber Dempsey—have been champions of “The Bostonians” campaign since the start. Additionally, we’ve been able to keep the core cast—Paul (the Minuteman), Jimmy (the groundskeeper), Landon (the Ice Cleaner) and Sam (the sister)—together.
We’ve even had access to the same Brady Bunch-style home location, too. I mention this continuity because “Season Three” (2024) was produced under unique circumstances where that familiarity was much appreciated.
As work for the third installment got underway, the agency I founded, HeyLet’sGo, where “The Bostonians” started, was in the process of being acquired by Rival. We were in production as the deal got done.
So during the acquisition—a time of massive change—we had this familiar, steady campaign as one of the first projects completed at the new agency.
New team? New agency? No problem. “The gang” was coming with us. Like the theme song says: “Knock-knock, come on in. They’re the Bostonians.”
