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[MUSIC PLAYING] JEFF HOROWITZ: Whiplash is a 19-year-old capuchin monkey from Texas. He saddles up on a Border Collie, wears a sombrero, and rides to the rescue, bearing Mexican fast food. Of course, there's a decent chance you already know this. For the Minneapolis-based Kerker ad agency, Whiplash is that holy grail of television advertising, a repeat character that clicks with the public. He's been a ticket to financial success and industry honors since Kerker cast him in his first commercial for them early last year.

SPEAKER 2: And this crunchy chicken and potato burrito looks awesome.

JEFF HOROWITZ: A man walks into a mailbox, dropping his burrito on the pavement. Whiplash, sensing trouble, picks up a replacement at Taco John's. And on the back of Ben The Dog, dashes over fields and streets to the diner in distress.

SPEAKER 2: Wow, a fresh, crunchy chicken and potato burrito.

JEFF HOROWITZ: The 10th and 11th ads in the Whiplash series began airing this week. Despite all the sequels, Kerker sees no need to retire the monkey anytime soon, nor does Taco John's. The Wyoming-based company says its 11% sales growth in the past year is the best in its 30-year history. Kerker creative director Chris Preston says the ads keep working because they place a memorable, admittedly ridiculous character in a familiar format.

CHRIS PRESTON: Much like the Lone Ranger serials or the Green Hornet, they all have a very similar sort of classic Americana genre kind of a feel of the imperiled heroine in that case, but the imperiled food in this case. And doing that classic story again and again with different variations is really part of the challenge in this campaign and part of the fun.

JEFF HOROWITZ: In early April, the Whiplash team gathered in a conference room to move ahead with the latest variation, tentatively titled Burrito Rider. It was copywriter Terry Thomas who first spotted Whiplash as a side act in a traveling rodeo. Thomas takes his bosses through the storyboard for the latest Whiplash adventure.

TERRY THOMAS: We open with the woman on the scooter. And she's got the grilled burrito in her hand. And as she's about to raise this burrito up and take a bite out of it, the scooter hits a bump. Because this burrito is in a sleeve, that's perfect opportunity for it to pop out on this bump. It pops out.

CHRIS PRESTON: How do you actually see the bounce happening? Is it going to be big enough naturally to bounce a burrito out of her hand, or is?

JEFF HOROWITZ: The discussion moves from one surreal logistical issue to the next. How do you film a burrito lying in the street and not make it unappetizing? Which Taco John's food will look best hovering in the sky as a backdrop for the monkey and dog galloping to the rescue? Creative director Chris Preston says people like Terry Thomas and Karl Madcharo, the art director on the Whiplash spots, need to leave some inhibitions behind to take these issues seriously.

CHRIS PRESTON: When you talk about most adults not be willing to sit and talk about burritos in the sky. And I think one of the magic things about really great creative people is that they have an ability to look at things with almost a child-like wonder. Commercials have been around for a lot of years now, and thinking of fresh ideas and original ideas really does take a child-like perspective sometimes.

JEFF HOROWITZ: Often, the best ads take on a life of their own, begetting more free advertising along the way. Like this news coverage in Kansas City, where some local kids swiped a cardboard cutout from a Taco John's.

SPEAKER 3: About a week ago, Whiplash was stolen. Now, the staff here doesn't want to get anybody in big trouble. They just want their favorite monkey back.

JEFF HOROWITZ: A week or so, after the storyboard meeting, Karl and Terry are getting ready to hunker down for the day with a pile of DVDs and videotapes. The director hired to shoot the commercial has sent these up from Dallas, where the spot will ultimately be filmed.

TERRY THOMAS: What we're going to do today is look at the first round of casting. We've got 20 women to look at for a particular role, the woman on the scooter.

JEFF HOROWITZ: Sitting backward on a chair to simulate riding a scooter, the women, one after another, deliver a basic line.

KARL MADCHARO: And action.

SPEAKER 4: Grilled chicken, mmm, potato arrays, nacho cheese, this burrito looks incredible. No, no, no.

JEFF HOROWITZ: This last moment is when the burrito slips from her grasp. It's meant to be over the top. And eager young actresses let it all hang out.

SPEAKER 4: No, no, no.

[LAUGHTER]

[WOMAN SHRIEKS]

No.

KARL MADCHARO: Yeah. Like we say, every time we look at these, we think a spot is going to be horrible. Oh, the spot's going to suck, when you watch these casting thing. But they actually turn out halfway decent.

JEFF HOROWITZ: At this stage, Karl and Terry are joined by the commercial's producer, Anne Swartz. The three move quickly through the auditions.

ANNE SWARTZ: She's too old. She's got a lot of hair. She's a little over-tweezed.

KARL MADCHARO: Where are they getting these people from? She's a model, not an actress.

JEFF HOROWITZ: Swartz, the producer, says there's a reason for the brutal efficiency of the process.

ANNE SWARTZ: I think there's a certain character to the kind of people that we've cast. That gold standard has been set, and we're trying to find it.

KARL MADCHARO: Well, we said, we were like, God, I would hate to be on the other side and have people telling me, ah, too fat.

[LAUGHTER]

TERRY THOMAS: Right. I mean, it would be really brutal for a talent to actually sit and watch people watch their audition tapes. I mean, you have to make decisions quick. You have 70 people to go through. And I mean, you don't have the luxury of considering whether they were on that day or off that day. All you've got is that minute on TV, and you have to make your call pretty quick.

JEFF HOROWITZ: The three of them mark the names of actresses they'd like to give a second chance. That means a callback the next week, in Dallas, where the next step in this process takes place. Burrito Rider is cast and shot during the first week in May, along with a commercial for a spicy chicken sandwich that is intended for a more limited broadcast. A week later, Terry and Karl are back in Minneapolis to edit the footage.

TERRY THOMAS: The shoot went very well. We lucked out. And we got good weather. I mean, it stopped raining about a half hour before we started shooting. And it started raining again when we were shooting our last scene.

JEFF HOROWITZ: How was the monkey this time, everything go smoothly?

TERRY THOMAS: Yeah. He did his thing, as he always does. He rode well. He didn't take a swipe at any of the talent.

JEFF HOROWITZ: There's a rule for working with Whiplash, no eye contact or he's likely to, well, lash out. On the first day of the first ever Whiplash shoot, the boy playing the Taco John's employee took three claws to the cheek. Now everyone knows Whiplash is safe, as long as you give him his space. In Dallas, the role of woman on scooter was cast with an actress who had the right look and ability to convey genuine dismay about a dropped burrito.

SPEAKER 5: No.

JEFF HOROWITZ: A video editor tweaks milliseconds here or there to optimize the telling of the story inside of 30 seconds. If it seems like perfectionism, art director Karl Madcharo knows just how delicate the process needs to be.

KARL MADCHARO: People don't have a lot of time. Especially now, they can change a channel, TiVo, or they're doing other stuff. And hopefully, there at least the two or three seconds you get to grab them quick enough. They see the opening, and they'll watch it.

JEFF HOROWITZ: Are you frightened at all of TiVo and what it means for what you do?

KARL MADCHARO: No. There is some talk in the industry about it, but there's really nothing, I don't know what you can do about it.

TERRY THOMAS: The whole TiVo thing is probably a little blown out of proportion. Still the most interesting thing on TV can be the commercials, often.

JEFF HOROWITZ: In an age when people can record TV and skip the ads, Karl and Terry say commercials have to be somehow fun, fascinating, or oddball. With the new Taco John's ads hitting the air this week, they're hoping Whiplash, The Cowboy Monkey continues to make the cut. I'm Jeff Horowitz, Minnesota Public Radio.

[MUSIC PLAYING]