Adam&eveDDB created bespoke artifacts for a beguiling museum campaign.
Done well, out-of-home advertising is hard to beat.
We saw a couple of good examples this week, from a celebrity OOH effort that was largely missing the celebrity, to a campaign whose impressive scale nicely mirrored that of its client’s product. Elsewhere, we got several pieces of memorable film work, including a fake vintage sitcom that ingeniously doubled as a product demo.
Check out the full Top 5 below.
Hanes has been in a nostalgic mood lately, and not for the ’80s or ’90s. For the second time in a year, the brand has traveled back to 1901 (the year of its founding) to tell a quirky story about what it’s been calling the “invention of comfort.” Last year’s spot centered on Downton Abbey-ish dandies of the era; this one visits the Wild West, where a dusty cowboy pulls into town, plods to the saloon and orders ... a pair of comfy Hanes underwear? It’s a strange but playful tale, with fun production design where the product really pops against the backdrop of dusty discomfort.
A fun one here from Quality Meats combining a high-concept idea with the charms of lowbrow comedy. This time we are in the ’90s, as former ‘SNL’-ers Molly Shannon and Tim Meadows goof around as siblings in a fake vintage sitcom. Befitting shows of the era, “Best in the House” is suitably grainy looking. The kicker is that the show looks sharp and clear when played on Samsung’s new TVs, which use something called “AI upscaling” to make vintage content look more modern. The company cleverly used the fake sitcom as a demo in introducing the TVs at an event last week.
Uncommon has had a lot of success with its out-of-home campaign called “A British Original.” (It won the Grand Prix in Outdoor at Cannes Lions last year.) Here’s a nice video execution of the same theme—a minute-long spot telling the story of a baby aboard a BA flight who, in a deep sleep, dreams of all the experiences she will have in the future as she embarks on her first trip. The music, from Groove Armada frontwoman Saint Saviour, drives the emotion. And the message—that travel changes you—is delivered here in a simple and unexpected way.
Here’s a sly take on the often Faustian bargain of hiring a celeb for your advertising: What if you don’t show the celeb’s face? Gut went that route in outdoor ads for Stella Artois featuring new endorser David Beckham—but not all of him, only his hands. “Unfortunately, his face was a bit distracting,” says the copy line—a fun acknowledgment of the fact that a lot of celebrity work does more for the celeb than for the brand. Of course, head-to-toe Beckham is visible in the global TV work—and in some other outdoor ads—but the brand still gets points for being playfully subversive in these executions.
The tattoos may give it away, but you still don’t see Beckham’s face.
We were pretty blown away by the scale and craft of this outdoor campaign for London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The agency worked with dozens of skilled creators to produce a number of unique objects focused on different interests—all of them serving as one-of-a-kind ads to promote the breadth of the museum’s permanent collection, which included 2.8 million items. The bespoke pieces were only one element of the campaign, which also included scores of site-specific posters featuring items from the collection as well as long-copy ads and videos from influencers. In all, it’s an impressive display of creativity and ambition worthy of the institution it promoted.
The V&A campaign almost functions as a scavenger hunt around Britain.
