Philips: The New Honda? And A Tip Of The Hat To T-Mobile
I was going to post this a couple of weeks ago when it would have looked really prescient, but instead I got side-tracked and now I’m just going to look like a lame band wagon-jumper..
No matter.
I think it’s about time that someone pointed out just how brilliantly Philips is doing what we’d all like our dull, giant, international brands to do: it’s becoming, for want of a better word, cool.
I won’t put Carousel up again, but let’s not forget this ad, which won a Cannes bronze last year:
I wrote a post at the time that expressed my surprise at a big, boring corporation promoting themselves with the whimsical musings of a tranny.
And this year, the bar has been well and truly raised again with Carousel taking the Film Grand Prix at Cannes.
It reminds me of Honda, and how it went from spewing out some of the worst advertising on earth to some of the best within the space of a couple of years. Philips appears to be doing the same (can you remember any of their advertising before these two?) and it has to be the mark of a good agency and a very good ECD.
Step forward Neil Dawson. Here’s hoping you have even better ads up your sleeve.
And while we’re on the subject of huge international corporations suddenly producing award-winning advertising, is that T-Mobile I see carrying several Lions away from Cannes?
T-Mobile used to be the most anonymous-bendy-world-generic-metaphor-shot-in-Cape-Town telco in the universe, until the most recent work came along.
Then it became talked about, famous and highly-awarded.
And all this has happened since Paul Silburn joined Saatchis London as the joint ECD.
Possibly not a coincidence.