Ad Digger – 26.9.14
This week’s selection of fine synch is all dressed up. From billowing fabric trails to gleaming chrome to ill-advised shirts, these spots star characters who are decked out and unafraid to strut their stuff.
The spirit of inventive fun is pretty infectious in another department too – Oreos produce the latest installment in a spate of interest around getting creative with sound (for reference: COS’s kooky pair of foley artists, our own collaboration with Lufthansa and Kolle Rebbe, and Nestle’s festive take last Christmas.)
Lycra – Moves You
Lycra’s colourful spot is a beautiful combination of the novel and the known. Happily clothed people dancing through their day is a familiar base, lifted to near-magical new heights by beautifully lit sets and bewitching visual effects. It’s kept airborne by the blithe and swooning strains (and slightly tweaked lyrics) of Nouvelle Vague’s ‘Dance With Me’, a cover which, at least in the advertising landscape, has long eclipsed the fame of the original by gothy new wavers The Lords of the New Church.
Song: Dance with me
Artist: Nouvelle Vague
Agency: Sapient Nitro
Production: Independent Films
Post Production: Glassworks
Nike Korea – Fun Wins
Nike encourages South Korean kids to break out of the results-obsessed strictures of the school system and embrace daft fun for fun’s sake through sports and general high-octane, low-pressure tomfoolery. They’re helped along by the chaotic, kinetic drive of Black John Lewis and the Honeybears’ ‘Boogie’, which has enough energy to tie every vignette together and a touch of gamey-eyed wonkiness to match the spot’s message (though that said, those dance routines still look suspiciously perfect.)
Song: Boogie
Artist: Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
Agency: Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo
Director: Ralf Schmerberg
Production: Radical Media
Forza Horizon 2 – Leave Your Limits
More breaking-free here, as Forza Horizont busts out of the track and into the Italian countryside (another Uncanny Valley live action experience reflecting the promise of a massive open world platform – some cheeky backlash to live action trailers is also out this week.) Accompanying stomach-turning speed on vertigo-inducing roads is the impossible catchiness of unpronounceable 1973 stomper Prisencolinensinainciusol, composed by Italian (of course) renaissance man Adriano Celentano and using nonsense words to reflect American English’s impression on a foreign ear. The shoulder-jerking beat, jazzily self-assured trumpets and rather sneering delivery match the unapologetically foolhardy stuntwork rather well.
Song: Prisencolinensinainciusol
Artist: Adriano Celentano
Agency: twofifteenmccann
Director: Adam Berg
Cadillac – Irresistible
Stephen Merchant’s quintessentially British physicality is at centre stage here, as his apparently head-turning style rapidly goes to his head. Between this and his roundly disdainful Newcastle series, could Merchant be carving out something of a niche for himself as American advertising’s go-to smug Brit? The bluesy flair of G Love and Special Sauce tops up his charm and puts the comical spring in his step.
Song: Come Up Man
Artist: G Love and Special Sauce
Agency: Rogue
Citroen – Dog stretch
A patient dog unkinks his road-weary limbs in the rare middle-of-nowhere pitstop that his owner’s fuel efficiency necessitates. Blue collar ballad Sixteen Tons (popularised by Tennessee Ernie Ford, and also seen this year in a vastly different context – and language – in Heineken’s Odyssey spot) provides something of both Southern swagger and resigned world-weariness, tempered by the wry, jaunty beat.
Song: 16 Tons
Artist: The Platters (comp. Merle Travis)
Agency: Les Galois
Director: Joachim Back
Production: Control Films
