The Write Stuff

If you’re tired of watching CGI footballers and sportsmen bouncing balls across the neighbourhood/plane/planet, you are probably ready for Nike’s wonderful new ad (which I was not involved with, by the way – I’m simply celebrating beautiful work).

It’s incredibly simple and, I’d venture to say, inspiring. It brings the whole issue back to personal achievements at a time when most brands focus on bombast and sound effects, which is another way of saying “shock and awe”.

Shot in one simple take, this ad will probably become a yardstick in terms of execution and impact. The long, unedited image and the copywriting in the voice-over work well off each other, as we slowly understand who that figure on the horizon is.

Does anyone know who the director and agency are?

This ad from Saatchi – which I had absolutely nothing to do with – is brilliant at a number of levels. What I like most is the pay-off (nope, I won’t spoil the pleasure). It runs through a series of CGI-enhanced levels before coming back to the most basic appeal imaginable.

We’re all beginning to understand that anything is possible in CGI. If you’ve sat through a dozen ads on steroids at the movies recently waiting for the big show to begin, you know how tiring it can be. So what if the screen shakes when the monster stomps by? Or of the screen seems to melt. We’ve seen that already. So it’s important to reach people with something more conceptual, which this ad does. In fact, it’s not just conceptual, it’s the emotional juice that raises the smile at the end.

Interesting also that it is basically a silent movie (the music is Charles Sheffield, "It's Your Voodoo Working").