Bestads Top 6 of the week reviewed by John Maxham, ECD, Cole & Weber United, Seattle
BEST TVWinner: Land Rover LR4 – 7th Wheel. In watching the TV entrants, I felt I was watching a series of brilliantly executed film shorts with tenuous connections to whatever product appeared at the end. The one exception was Land Rover LR4 – 7th wheel. It too was brilliantly executed film, yet the humor flowed effortlessly from the product benefit. It was uniquely Land Rover throughout. Some spots are merely funny. Others are merely smart. 7th wheel is funny and smart.
Runner Up: No runner up.
Winner: Jardim Zoologico de Lisboa, Lisbon Zoo – Zoo Sounds. I’ve seen a lot of ads for Zoos. And guess what? They all have pictures of animals in them. This ad depicts zoo animals in a totally fresh and unexpected way. But what’s even better is now that I’m a parent I realize that, under certain conditions, kids can turn into animals too. Human truth. You win.
Runner Up: Forbes Magazine: Bill Gates. This was a fascinating look at the impact that one man made on the world. Beautiful to look at and to think about.
Winner: Ford – Smell new. There’s an old saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it”. The same could have been said about new car smell. It’s one of the most viscerally appealing things about getting a new ride. It works on an almost subconscious level. But, up until now, there was just one way to get it: actually buy a new car. Bottling new car smell and then using it to make slightly used cars more appealing is a stroke of genius.
Runner up: DB Export Dry – The wine that sold beer. Clever, simple, well written, and refreshingly not overproduced. Great placement. It’s always nice to find a friend where you least expect it.
Winner: Earphone Bully. I’m not generally a fan of forced empathy. But this is different. Earphone Bully is executed so convincingly, so bluntly, that it gave me a pit in my stomach. Listening to it causes a realization that this type of abuse (and worse) happens every day in schools around the world. To think about it happening to someone you care about, or even a total stranger, is unsettling.
Runner up: Hospital for Sick Children – Pain Squad. Retrieving important medical data is difficult enough. But getting the data from sick kids and making the whole thing fun for them is really an accomplishment.
2 Comments
A 20 second google search tells you that people have been selling ‘new car smell’ aerosols for ages now.
A cute idea, but hardly a ‘stroke of genius’.
Zoo ad cynics bow! ha, really nice ad….fresh and unexpected is spot on.