Bestads Top 6 of the Week – reviewed by Erkki Izarra, creative director/founder of 358 Helsinki

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Toyota. It worked like a great detective story. You knew what was coming up but you still enjoyed every moment. It also told more than just the benefit. It showed that we develop all kinds of relationships to the product and with the product to the people around us. It was like visualising the Facebook of a car. With this great insight you were left waiting for the 2011 aspect of this campaign… Where is the app that enables you to connect with the people that have used the car before you? Imagine if rental companies would do that…

Runner up is Vegemite because I play hockey and because Finland is the fresh world champion… I guess Aussies like this commercial because of the same sort of patriotism.

Fur… Sorry, four hands are funny. Fur hands could have been even funnier. Well, glad they sticked to four hands. Bingo. Breeze with comfort is the best print. This week’s print ads didn’t tell us things that we didn’t already know except for Scott and Bailey that presented a new TV series in a quite clever way. So, the novelty of the series has pushed this team to try harder than just dramatizing a product benefit in a symbolic way… Which is our common understanding of a good print ad: such a clever visual riddle that it takes a faaaaar too long moment to understand compared to the average flick of a page.

I was fortunate to watch these in the order where the ideas grew and grew and grew. Sooooo good. This category is always the most creative, most ground breaking and hardest to predict. So… The last one I watched was the TEDx Buenos Aires. Why was it better than the rest? Because it was based on an insight in human behaviour rather than on a media gimmick. Ok, I admit that it was a gimmick but it was based on the lovely characteristics of cab drivers in Buenos Aires (Only place where I’ve been in a cab crash because the driver was too enthusiastically explaining something…. And where cab driver told me that the demonstrators we saw would be easy to recruit if I’d need a demonstration). The Brazilian anti racism thing for Asics earned a lot of media with a simple idea. It would be degrading to call it just a media gimmick. And the Poolball was a great invention: a new sport for men. And the Orange orchestra was kind of clever stunt too. The Auckland open source story felt somehow seen but was beautiful. Whereas the guys in my second hometown, Amsterdam, made me thank my luck I didn’t see their male stripper.

The Best Internet idea is an idea I’m tempted to steal for our bank client. Colenso BBDO is exactly on the opposite side of the globe, so they’ll never know if I’ll nick their Westpac thingy. The runnerup is Reporters Without Borders.

It’s almost midnight, so my deadline is here. Thank you for reading and good night.