Why Is This Ad So Good?

This won the Cannes Grand Prix for film:

I’ve written about it a few times this year, but I think it’s interesting how it’s actually got better with age.

Now with eleven million YouTube views and a fascinating ‘Making of‘, this is a properly big, no-scam event commercial.

And what’s truly astounding in this day and age is that no one has unearthed the YouTube clip from which it was stolen.

Other great things about it:

It’s revitalised a brand we all thought was a joke. I had a haircut a few months ago in a very old-fashioned Turkish barber. Without asking, the guy splashed some Old Spice on and I was quite happy for him to do so. I think a year ago I might have been a bit put out.

It’s by far the best execution in a campaign that was very good, but never reached this level. Executions such as Hungry Like The Wolf were enjoyable, but a little too self-conscious and retro cheesy to be properly good.

It sells. The bloke hold the bottle up and wangs on about it and yet the ad is amazing. Now none of us can complain when we have to do a producty-demo-ey ad.

It’s for PROCTOR AND FUCKING GAMBLE. Supposedly the worst client with the most annoying set of rules has commissioned the best ad of the year. Again, we can have no excuses (This follows a couple of Grands Prix for Dove a few years back).

It’s a new screen: Helmut Krone used to speak of good art direction as creating a ‘new page’ – a layout nobody had ever seen before to make sure it was fresh and therefore intriguing enough to stop you. This is like nothing I have ever seen. It treads a precarious line between irony and bang-on, straightforward sell, but pulls it off brilliantly.

In short, it attempts a triple pike with double-quadruple half twist into a glass of water and succeeds with excellence to spare.

Hats all the way off to everyone involved.

UPDATE: Sorry, while you’re here, is it just me or is the winner of the Titanium Lion pretty woeful?