For a director whose career depends on planning every conceivable detail, Andrew Lane is surprisingly comfortable admitting he doesn’t know what’s going to happen.
In fact, that’s exactly what he’s hoping for.
“We go in with the best plan,” he says, “and see what we get and adapt as we go along.”
The Washington Square Films director sat down with me to discuss why unscripted fan experiences and hidden-camera storytelling have become critical tools for breaking through in sports marketing.
Lane’s philosophy is unusual in commercial filmmaking, where every frame is normally storyboarded long before cameras roll.
But Lane has built a career doing almost the opposite. Whether it’s Lionel Messi appearing in a “Lay’s Crawl” campaign, Serena Williams surprising unsuspecting paddle players for Heineken 0.0, Steve Carell improvising his way through Lay’s “The Most Epic Watch Party,” Tim Howard turning up in an American Airlines World Cup campaign, or Thierry Henry knocking on strangers’ doors for Lay’s “No Lay’s, No Game,” his best work isn’t about executing a script.
It’s about creating the conditions for something genuine to happen.
“I like to lean into the rawness, the unpredictable,” he says. “You have to leave space for magic to happen.”
That mindset began long before he was directing commercials for global brands.
Growing up in Texas, Andrew developed an early fascination with humor. “I was very into comedy stuff,” he says. “I used to consume tons of comedy on HBO. Kids in the Hall. Letterman. Just all that stuff. My brothers and I would watch movies all the time.”
After graduating from the University of Texas, Lane moved to New York and entered television through unscripted programming. His early work included MTV’s Boiling Points, ABC’s What Would You Do?, and the early seasons of Impractical Jokers; later, he worked on unscripted series including Top Chef and Project Runway.
Those years taught him something traditional commercial production rarely does: people are almost always more interesting than the performance you imagined for them. “I kind of stayed in that world,” he says. “Dealing with real people, creating situations and capturing them and then seeing what happens.” That became the foundation of everything that followed.
Rather than thinking of himself as simply a hidden-camera specialist, Lane sees his work as a combination of storytelling and psychology. “It is storytelling,” he says. “But it is also kind of human nature. Understanding a little bit of the psychology behind certain things and trying to anticipate how people will react to certain situations, how do we create those situations to get the reactions that we want, and then put the camera in the right place to capture that.”
It’s deceptively complicated. Unlike scripted filmmaking, where every performance can be repeated until it’s perfect, his productions often have only one chance. “If it doesn’t happen the first time, then we just move on.”
That philosophy reached its ultimate test during Lay’s “Chip Cam,” the ambitious “No Lay’s, No Game” stunt filmed at San Siro Stadium during a UEFA Champions League match between AC Milan and PSG. The campaign featured David Beckham and Thierry Henry searching the crowd for fans with Lay’s.
Lane laughs, describing it now. “That shoot was a huge mind fuck.”
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Months of preparation led to just minutes of execution. “The pre-pro on that was five or six months to do a five-minute shoot basically,” he says. “There really were no contingency plans. Everything hinged on that moment. There was no room for error.”
Those five minutes remain unlike anything else in his career.
“It was probably the craziest five minutes of my life,” he says. “I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”
The logistics bordered on military precision.
“We had people with telescopes spotting people and relaying that back to me, and then I’d relay that to the camera operators.”
Elsewhere, long-range broadcast sports lenses captured reactions from across the stadium while assistants coordinated dozens of moving pieces. The production required coordination with UEFA, AC Milan and the broadcast team before a single camera rolled.
“We only had about five minutes,” he says. “It was very, very, very live.”
When it was over? “We closed down the hotel bar.”
For Lane, though, the adrenaline isn’t the point.
“The experience is kind of the thing for me.”
The bigger reward is discovering moments no writer could invent.
He still laughs remembering a Lay’s campaign featuring Thierry Henry.
One fan answered the door to find his childhood hero standing there.
“He was like, ‘Can I have a hug?’”
Lane pauses. “It was just such a real moment.”
Another participant desperately tried to convince Henry not to leave.
“Thierry’s like, ‘If you don’t have Lay’s, I’m not going to stay and watch the game.’”
The young fan disappeared into the kitchen before returning with two potatoes.
“He was like, ‘I’ll make you Lay’s.’”
Lane remembers the entire crew losing it.
“We all lost it in video village. No one could have written it. That’s something you couldn’t script.”
Those surprises don’t only come from everyday people. They come from celebrities, too. Working with Serena Williams on Heineken 0.0’s “Unexpected Doubles” became memorable not because she followed direction, but because she stopped following it.
“At a certain point, I just handed her the mic,” Lane says. “She started talking to the actor and feeding him lines as we were going along.”
The campaign instantly became something better than originally planned. “Including her in that made it that much better. It elevated what we originally had planned.”
Steve Carell brought a similar energy to Lay’s “The Most Epic Watch Party,” part of the brand’s “No Lay’s, No Game” platform. “You just kind of wind him up and let him go.”
Lane recalls Carell inventing hilarious moments throughout the day that never even appeared in the final edit. “He did so much funny stuff that never got into the final piece. At one point, Carell ran over to random cars asking strangers if they had Lay’s chips. It was fun to watch someone that’s so funny just do whatever he wanted.”
Those moments illustrate something Lane repeatedly returns to: authenticity requires giving up control.
Brands aren’t always comfortable with that.
“I don’t know what we’re going to get,” he says, describing the conversations that happen before these productions begin. “But we’re going to get something.”
That leap of faith can be uncomfortable for marketers accustomed to knowing every shot before production starts. “It does take a certain level of courage,” he says.
He remembers one client admitting afterward, “‘Holy shit, we didn’t think this was going to work. But it did.”
Lane believes audiences recognize the difference immediately. “I do think viewers can smell bullshit.”
That’s why his productions avoid recreating moments after the fact.
“We don’t even bother to shoot pickup shots,” he says. “It’s not worth it.”
Instead, the team protects the surprise. “You really only have one shot at it.”
That philosophy feels particularly relevant today. As artificial intelligence makes it easier than ever to fabricate perfect images, Lane’s work succeeds for the opposite reason. Nothing is perfect. People hesitate. They laugh unexpectedly.
They hug celebrities. They chase Thierry Henry down the street.
One woman became so determined to keep talking to Henry that she literally pursued him while he hid inside the production van. “We had so much funny stuff,” Lane says, laughing. “You can’t use all of it.”
That’s the irony of his work. The best material is often impossible to plan and impossible to repeat. Perhaps that’s why campaigns like his resonate. Viewers instinctively imagine themselves inside those situations.
“How would I react to that?” Lane believes that’s part of the appeal.
The scenarios themselves may be extraordinary, but the emotions aren’t.
Surprise. Joy. Disbelief. Connection. Those feelings are real. They’re also fragile.
For all the technical complexity behind these productions, Lane ultimately measures success more simply.
“We always say this is going to be the best day of this person’s life. They get to meet their hero.”
After years of orchestrating these experiences, Lane still struggles with promoting himself. Asked what agencies hire him for that they can’t find elsewhere, he hesitates. It’s a surprising response from a Cannes Lion award-winning director behind some of the most memorable commercials of the past decade.
“I just do my best to set the stage and then get out of the way,” he says.
And maybe that’s the genius behind Lane’s approach. Experience matters, certainly. So does technical expertise. But Lane’s real skill may be something far less tangible. Creating an environment where extraordinary things can happen. Where the approach isn’t about controlling every moment. It’s about creating the conditions for the genuine ones to come through.
To view Andrew’s reel click here.
Amy Pais-Richer is a published author, screenwriter, and former advertising creative director.
