International

From the same folks who showed us what life through the eyes of a tree-climber is like comes an equally unique spot touting the international capabilities of HSBC Bank. A poor executive is sent to find out why his company’s washer & dryer sales are up in India only to find that someone has found a somewhat ‘non-traditional’ use for them. Clever spot…borderline cute. How this translates to show the capacity of HSBC’s international banking though I have no idea.

Axel Chaldecott from JWT, London was the creative behind this piece with Dean Baker as the Agency Producer. Kevin MacDonald from Rogue Films was the Director along with David Katznelson as the DP. Alice Rowbotham was the Producer and The Mill did all the post-production work. Justine Wright was the Editor.

Here’s the latest for Wrangler asking us the big question in life… “Why?”
Conceptualized by Copywriter/Art Director team Baptiste Clinet and Nicolas Lautier from Fred & Farid, Paris, this short is brought to us entirely in black and white. Even though this spot was produced by a French agency, they decided to go with the audio being spoken in English. The French version only contains subtitles…interesting choice.

Max Hykel from DPE7 was the Director along with Yannis Rachid as the Editor. Robin Accard and Yann Yap were Agency Producers for this campaign.

Here’s a pretty funny new commercial coming out of Argentina for Axe Body Wash. It starts out rather sweet with birds flocking to a young man who’s just gotten out of the shower, offering him a towel, then takes a turn for the worse. He walks out to his bedroom only to be assaulted by various animals, all of whom try to dress him as if he was a princess. It’s a re-inactment of the scene from Disney’s animated Sleeping Beauty story, where the birds help the poor girl get ready for the prince. Or so I’ve been told… it’s not like I’ve seen it 100 times or anything, promise!

It also has a great tag-line to wrap it all up at the end:

If you use a Woman’s Soap, You’ll smell like one.

This piece also shows us what could have happened if the guy had instead used a men’s soap like Axe body wash - Once again, animals assault the young man. This time though they all have the body of supermodels and I wouldn’t really call it “assault.”

Clever.

This spot was by Joaquin Cubria and Ignacio Ferioli from Vegaolmosponce. Marcelo Burgos was the Director from Garlic Films along with Pancho Alcaine as the Director of Photography. Luis Ramirez was the Art Director from the production company and Pablo Plant was the Editor. Post-production was done by Miopía. The music for this piece was an adapted version of Tchaikovski’s Sleeping Beauty by Swing Musica.

As some of you may know, I’m a sucker for any spots with good soundtracks, and this is yet another example of that. Shown above is the latest commercial for Australian T-shirt company Bonds. It tries to capture the spirit of teenage angst, in part by following a group of teens on a road-trip but also through a deeper story involving the fragile nature of young love. One of the girls in the story hooks up with a boy throughout the trip, only to witness him together with another female road-warrior at the end. We then see her shrugging it off on the beach in the final scene. The music is a personal favorite of mine, it’s Weekend Wars by MGMT. If you like it I recommend you go check out their latest album (which features the song you just heard) called Oracular Spectacular.

The agency behind this commercial was The Campaign Palace, Sydney and it was conceptualized by Georgia Arnott and Jon Burden (Meredyth Judd was the Agency Producer).

Christopher Riggert from @radical.media was the Director along with Tim Hudson as the DP. Rob Galluzzo and Victoria Conners-Bell were the Executive Producer/Producers for the production company. Post-production was by The Lab, Sydney. Marcus Timpson was the Colorist and Stewart Reeves from Guillotine was the Editor. Simon Lister at Nylon Studios was the Sound Designer.

Once again the song used in this commercial was MGMT - Weekend Wars

Here’s an amazing new spot from BMW (South Africa) that features Guillaume Nery in a breathtaking look at the world of freediving. The protagonist in this commercial is Guillaume Nery, a word champion freediver. He’s got some more video of him freediving on his blog so if you liked this piece, go check it out.

John Javenport and Gina King were the Copywriter/Art Director team from Ireland Davenport, Johannesburg (with Chantal Kriel as Agency Producer). Greg Gray was the Director for Velocity Films and featured Helena Woodfine as the Producer. The Talkies was the co-production company used with Rob Malpage & Didier Noirot as DP. Kobus Loots edited this amazing video with Upstairs Post Production. The work was all done at Blade Post Production with Alun Richards as the Sound Designer from Cut & Paste.