Wahoo's Fish Taco 2000 Merrill Lynch National Commercial

Описание: The commercial is actually the work of financial conglomerate Merrill Lynch. Wanting to spotlight its relationship with its small business division, company officials looked at more than 400 of its clients.

They picked six businesses that best represented the message they were trying to convey. The lucky owners of a only a handful of small businesses stretching from Connecticut to California would be rewarded with a nationwide audience. One of them was Wahoo's Fish Taco.

"The commercials tell the story of how they got started and how we've helped them to get where they are now," said Dominic Alvarez, a Merrill Lynch representative who worked with the Wahoo's folks. "Our selection committee loved the Wahoo's story."

The gang at Wahoo's couldn't have been more excited. With only a dozen locations in California and Colorado, the owners and employees knew they couldn't reach a broader audience with a limited advertising budget.

"We could never afford the amount of money needed for a national television ad campaign," said Renato "Mingo" Lee, Wahoo's director of finance. Lee started the restaurant chain with his two brothers in 1988.

He said his company had been working with Merrill Lynch for three years when company officials approached him and his employees in October about the ad.

"When we got the first call and they said they were interested in us, we were pretty excited. When they told us they wanted to film the commercial, we were stoked," Lee said.

Filming began in November at two of the Wahoo's locations -- Bristol Street in Costa Mesa and the Pacific Coast Highway restaurant in Laguna Beach. They also shot the brothers surfing near the Newport Pier and having a family dinner at a relative's home in Tustin. Before they knew it, the film was in the can.

"It was fast-paced chaos," Lee remembered. "They were in and out in two days. I didn't know how they were going to filter all of the filming into a short, one-minute ad.