Motherhood is hardly all love and roses in this beauty brand’s short film.
While everyone was fretting about the Apple iPad spot, there was actually some good advertising out there to be enjoyed this week.
The best of it was packaged as short films, including two striking efforts from South America and one for a U.S. sneaker maker. We also saw a notorious swimwear maker undergo a rebrand and Coca-Cola continue its string of notable new work.
Check out the full Top 5 below.
Speedo has tried for years to try to elude the perception that its brand is synonymous with European-style swim briefs. Now, in a refreshing shift, it’s embracing that perception in a 90-second spot from Mirimar. There are lots of bathing suit styles in the ad, but the swim briefs are prominent—as are people’s double takes upon seeing them. But the campaign reframes these Speedo wearers as confident, proud individualists who don’t care what others think—a smart way to turn a seeming liability into a strength. The ad is just fun and high-energy as well. A great example of working within the truth of a brand instead of running from it.
The first of three compelling short films on this list, “The Cure” tackles an ongoing problem—LGBTQ+ conversion therapy in Brazil—with cinematic skill and a steely resolve to fix the problem. The 4:30 film revisits the 1930s and ’40s, when conversion therapy involved physically abusing treatments, then flashes to the present day, where the tactics of trying to turn someone straight might be different but are still horribly inhumane. The call to action at the end is potent, given all that’s come before. An impressive bit of filmmaking that could really make a difference.
So much Coca-Cola work lately! (The soda giant and its agencies are certainly well aware of the Cannes Lions deadline.) This print, out-of-home, digital and video campaign by David Miami shows people experiencing spontaneous moments of joy while they happen to be holding an open bottle of Coke—which gets spilled everywhere. “Worth every drop” is the tagline. The campaign visuals are great, and the work thematically extends Coke’s recent impulse not to be so precious about its product shots. Much like the crushed-can logos from last month, the “Spills” campaign feels loosely exuberant, while still well-crafted.
The product can’t be contained in Coca-Cola’s frenetic still images.
Who knew New Balance had such a rich history across so many subcultures? Brand legacy stories are often on the boring side, but this seven-minute film from American Haiku (a new agency named after an Errol Morris quote about commercials as an art form) is entrancing from start to finish. The black-and-white 16mm film has a raw, immediate feel, and the vignettes—separate but atmospherically connected—celebrate the brand’s almost mythic status at different times in different corners of the world. Seven minutes sounds like an eternity in advertising time, but it zips by—and you’re left with a whole new view of the sneaker maker.
We saw lots of Mother’s Day ads this week, but this one really stood out—both for its craft and its honest depiction of a certain stage of parenting. The 4-minute film tells the story of a mother and son who are clashing as he’s become a teenager—a conflict that’s visualized in memorable fashion by imagining if their house were a boat on a stormy sea. The performances are strong, the production design is incredible, but the real breakthrough is simply focusing on the conflict rather than the treacly platitudes typical of Mother’s Day marketing.
