Every day we come across hundreds of commercial messages. Only a handful are memorable. Here are a few top creative ads which caught my eye, the week ending 9th March, 2018: a short film for HomePod, outdoor for Postmates and more.
1. HomePod: Welcome Home
The beauty of the audio visual medium is the ability to transport the viewer to an imaginary world…the ability to transform a mood. Well-executed radio spots do that too but in a relatively limited way. In this short film for HomePod, film maker Spike Jonze brings alive how music can be the catalyst to a transformation from dreary work day to a chilled out evening. The visuals are trippy and dramatise the change from a regular living room to another world. Loved it.
2. John West: It’s a no from John West
One of the most famous ads of all time is this one for John West where an employee of the company literally fist fights a bear to bring the best salmon. It drives home the point that the brand goes to great lengths to choose quality ingredients. In continuation of the theme, but with a slight variation is this one with a proposition, ‘It’s what John West rejects that makes John West the best’.
Agency: JWT, Melbourne
3. adidas: See Creativity
As part of Women’s Day several brands created topical ads attempting to link their brand with the occasion. While the link was tenuous or forced in most cases, this ad for adidas caught my eye thanks to the visual device used in the TVC. The gender of the athlete is cleverly ‘blocked’ to drive home the point ‘Recognize athletes for creativity, not gender’.
Agency: 72andSunny
4. Postmates: we get it
A delivery app in the US has a series of billboards with a tagline ‘We get it’. Aside from the obvious fit to the service the line lends itself well to convey that ‘whatever your reason for ordering that, we get it’. Apparently, the insights are based on user data. Halo Top, an ice cream brand is the most ordered item in Los Angeles from the grocery category. Hence a billboard with the line “When the breakup was bad, but only 360-calories bad. Halo Top. Postmates. We get it.” Here are a few others:
Agency: 180LA
5. Shutterstock: road
Getty Images and Shutterstock are among the leading brands providing stock images as a service. In terms of product features there could be very little difference between such services. In such a situation, the advertising idea plays an important role in creating preference. Getty Images has created some great work in the past. Here’s one for Shutterstock which is also quite compelling. The idea: an ad that shows many images that form a road – to highlight the large volume of images uploaded per hour.
Agency: Mercado McCann, Buenos Aires, Argentina
6. KIA: road safety
Thanks to mobile phone addiction and the rise of social media, distractions are aplenty. When driving this can be a huge risk. While everyone understands this, most drivers succumb to the distraction of peering into the phone instead of keeping the eyes on the road. A print campaign in Canada highlights this.
Agency: Innocean
A tad soft for a serious subject? My all-time favourite in the category is this brutal, hard-hitting one for Traffic Accident Commission, Melbourne.
Which ones worked for you? Do comment in.
