Supernatural Advertising
This commercial for Centrino Cleancontrol made by Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany may exaggerate the product’s effectiveness a bit, but it’s entertaining… and you get the point.
TV commercial
Braun Hairmoticons
This fun TV commercial, which won a 2011 One Club gold pencil award in the Broadcast Design single category, was created by BBDO Dusseldorf for Braun’s Satin Hair 5 Multistyler curler. The “hairmoticons” ad, set to the tune of Leroy Anderson’s “Typewriter,” suggest that users can curl their hair in whatever style suits their mood. The animation is by VCC. Cute.
Citroën’s C3 Bip Bip Fantasy
Created by Agence H in Paris, the new Citroën commercial for the C3 is funny, effective and amazing for what it doesn’t say and doesn’t show. For one, it doesn’t show the new C3 until the very end. It doesn’t have a voiceover explaining each of the car’s fancy standard features. It just shows a man driving an old car and pretending that it comes “loaded with specs” by imitating the sounds that each feature would make. You don’t have to speak English or French to get the point.
Sapporo Legendary Biru Commercial
If you have to take a bathroom break, do it during the program because you won’t want to miss this TV commercial for Sapporo Beer – or “biru” as the Japanese would pronounce it.
Developed by Toronto-based Dentsu Canada, the commercial represents the Japanese beermaker’s first full-scale ad campaign in Canada. Co-directed by Mark Zibert of Sons and Daughters and Gary Thomas of Crush, the film was shot on location in Guangzhou, China over the period of a month.
A mythological tale of how Sapporo beer is crafted, the two-minute film has an other-worldly epic quality like “Lord of the Rings.” It combines photography, animation/CG, and 2D art/matt paintings onto geometry, developed by Crush’s Sean Cochrane. Three dedicated artists were assigned to create each of the transitional rooms, with illustrations by James Zhang guiding the way. The cast too was composed of authentic trained martial artists, taiko drummers, and sumo wrestlers, along with actors playing samurai warriors and geishas. All in all, it’s an elegant departure from the “male-bonding, jock-humor” beer ads shown on American TV.
Clever Marketing or Simulated Sex?
We know that sex sells, but at what point do you cross over the line from suggestive to simulated? For the past week, the @Issue editorial team and interested others at Studio Hinrichs have been engaged in an ongoing dispute. My opinion and that of several others (who just happened to all be women) was that this commercial bordered on soft porn (the next ad in this series even more so). The male designers in the office watched the commercial attentively before describing it as “stylish,” “well-designed,” and “clever marketing.”