Who is the rock climber in the citi commercial

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It's not. Citi really did persuade professional rock climber Katie Brown pictured to summit the "Ancient Art" rock formation in Utah's Moab desert, with a camera on her head, as she stands atop the tower and looks down, hundreds of feet, into the dizzying canyon beneath her feet.

The ad is almost ubiquitous on TV right now. You've probably heard its musical refrain, "Somebody left the gate open. Publicis began work on the ad in August The ad is for Citi's "Thank You" card, and it needed to show someone buying a lot of stuff.

As Tom Drymalski, Publicis' executive creative director, put it, "What is a sport or a hobby or an interest that people get involved with that really requires buying lots of different pieces? The agency had a couple of different teams on the project, brainstorming a lot of ideas to see which would rise to the top, one of which was, "she'll be a rock climber and she'll be up on a mountain! One of the early images was of Ancient Art, a rock formation that is part of Fisher Towers in Utah's Moab desert similar to this image from Flickr.

The use of Ancient Art became a key concept that tied the entire creative process together, from beginning to end. In September, Publicis tested the concepts on actual consumers and went into a series of script approval meetings with their clients at Citi, who included Elyssa Gray, head of creative and media; Jennifer Lindauer, marketing director; and Ursula Castrillon, marketing VP. The agency next needed to find a female climber, who could also act and get to the top of a rock face, and a commercial director to shoot her doing it.

This was the original casting call, on summitpost. As far as the climbers went, "it's a pretty small universe," Drymalski said. On Oct. But we said if we're going to do this let's make it epic. The best way to do that is to make it real. It turned out that Ancient Art was actually do-able as a place to film. Ancient Art itself is not technically difficult for an experienced climber, either. I got up to the base camp and said, 'this is high enough for me! The shoot was conducted from Oct.

There was a crew of 20 - 30 people, at two rock locations the third location is the jewelry store at the start if the ad. The set included a lightweight camera on Brown's head, one near the top of the spire, and one shooting from a "base camp" below. Astonishingly, Brown and Honnold normally climb without ropes. In this case, Citi and Publicis required ropes and helmets for safety.

Brown stood on top for about an hour and a half before they were happy with the shot, Dymalski said. If you have an unusual ad, and some behind-the-scenes imagery that explains how it was made, we'd love to write about it.