The Search for 'Obama'
You may have seen the commercial on TV or the Internet.
President-elect Barack Obama has dinner at the Malacañang and is fed too much Filipino fare, from kare-kare that’s “oks” to guinataang mais that’s “corn.”
Trying to be polite, Obama tries them all until dyspepsia or impatso gets the better of him.
“Ohmygash! That’s impatso nah!” his host Ate Glow frets. Ate Glow (actor Rene Facunla) glides along the dinner table and offers him Motillium, a motility drug that alleviates impatso.
Thirty minutes later Obama is relieved and offered “kapeng baraks.”
End TVC.
We all know Ate Glow (a.ka. Rene Facunla) but who exactly is this Obama knockoff and where did they find him?
A spokesman for the ad agency TWBASantiago Mangada Puno says the search for “Obama” began when a client (Janssen Pharmaceuticals) asked for a storyboard for Christmas, that time of year when people tend to overeat. Enter Motilium, the motility drug.
At that time, pictures of the Obama look-alike were circulating on the Internet. People assumed he was Filipino, so the ad agency thought it would be easy to locate him. Turns out the guy is an Indonesian national and a photographer by profession.
To track him down, they went through TWBA Indonesia, which produced the guy’s name and photo within two hours.
Six days later the photographer was in an acting workshop with Facunla, a one-day photoshoot and a one-day filming.
The Obama lookalike hardly spoke a word of English and traveled with an interpreter.
In real life he isn’t as tall as Obama’s 6 feet (more like 5’9”) and looks more Asian than African American. “When you look closely, his nose is pango,” a spokesperson from the ad agency said.
One of the more brilliant aspects of the TVC is how Ate Glow glides down on a dolly, from one end of the table to the other. The result is strangely funny, as though Ate Glow wasn’t exactly human (read: manananggal-esque).
