Mercy University is Made for Mavericks
A behind-the-scenes look at how a creative vision and a director’s passion came together to relaunch Mercy as a university.
Picture a typical ad for a university: Sweeping drone footage of campus. Young people smiling and playing frisbee. Students huddled over microscopes and laptops. “We wanted to go hard against that,” said associate creative director Ryan Barber of Familiar Creatures, the agency tapped to create Mercy University’s new commercial.
Their creative team wanted something that was unique to Mercy and that would stand out in a busy advertising landscape. It was during a key brainstorming session that they figured out how to incorporate Mercy’s mascot, the Maverick horse, into the commercial. They envisioned the wild creature in the middle of a Bronx street and liked the idea of how jarring that would be.
More important, the concept worked as a powerful metaphor to inspire future Mercy Mavericks. Mercy’s marketing team worked closely with the agency to ensure that the message was true to students’ stories. “We loved that the concept showed that Mercy students don’t necessarily follow a traditional education path,” said Kristen Sangregorio, Mercy’s creative director. “Every challenge can lead to something extraordinary.”
Familiar Creatures found the perfect director in Cuba Tornado Scott. An accomplished artist and director, her art-driven style is the hallmark of her boundary-defying work. Granddaughter of director Ridley Scott, her vision embodied the spirit of the Maverick and the spirit of Mercy students themselves.
Scott was also an accomplished equestrian, growing up on horseback. She felt an immediate connection to the story and the project, and her inspiration for the shoot came from the profound lessons she had learned from a lifetime of loving horses. That spirit was the core of her vision for the commercial, and her experience, skill and tenacity made it all happen.
“This isn’t Hollywood, where we have stunt doubles and a bunch of different horses if it doesn’t work,” explained Justin Bajan, co-founder and creative director at Familiar Creatures. “There’s a lot of moving pieces, but she was unfazed.”
Scott’s industry connections proved invaluable to the production. “People came out of the woodwork to support her, and she was very much in control,” Barber said.
From her mother, Rhea Scott, founder and producer of Little Minx Films, to the horse handler who worked on “Game of Thrones,” there were “a lot of amazing things she brought with her that we didn’t even know about when we hired her,” Barber added.
The setting was a major character in the story, and the team found the perfect location at 1896 Studios & Stages in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. The studio’s four turn-of-the-century warehouses are home to more than a dozen unique locations for shooting photos, film and television, and houses 30 artist studios. It was the ideal space for a complicated shoot that featured ‘wild’ horses galloping down gritty New York City streets.
When auditioning actresses, they needed someone who looked like she could be a Mercy student. But the selection had added challenges, because the actress had to be very comfortable around horses and expressive enough to convey complicated emotions with no dialog.
When the team at Familiar Creatures met actress Sojourner Brown, they knew they had found their star. Without saying a word, “She was able to convey the whole emotional arc — from curiosity, to fear, to gaining confidence, to determination, to her triumph,” Bajan said.
Asked what it was like working with the horses, named Jedi and Cricket, there were “no issues,” Barber said. “It was awesome from the beginning, and it just kept getting better... you couldn’t take your eyes off them.”
The shoot wrapped, and the commercial premiered in fall 2023. A highlight of its run so far has been a placement during the 2024 Super Bowl.
Watching the final spot, from the moment the hero peers curiously down a dark alleyway, the audience is hooked. So is she. Her encounter with a mysterious horse in the middle of the city transitions from apprehension to confidence. As they gallop down the New York City street, she feels powerful and free. She feels like a Maverick.