5. Heineken Mustache
I love the message in this commercial. There are some things that are just right for the occasion. While the rest of society might think, 'That's weird. Why does he has a handlebar mustache', you just know that some day, in your most epic moment, while the skeptics change their hearts and cheer you on, your handle bar mustache will be the one thing about you that causes people to say 'He's doing it! And look at the mustache... it's perfect'
4. Michael Jordan 100 foot rim
I love the message of this commercial. The measures in basketball, that were designed in the beginning to contain the physical capacity of the men playing the game, were broken by Michael Jordan. One man was so good at what he did, that he not only beat his opponents every night, but he also beat the game. To make this game challenging enough for the best, you have to change the rules. These rule-breakers exist outside of the limitations of our imaginations, and yet they are the ones...who change the world.
3. Tiger Wood's Nike Chip Commercial
The build-up is the best part. What I love about this commercial is the limitations on words. The non-verbals say everything. There is a lot of pressure here. Tiger is the leader. It is hole 16 of the Masters and he WANTS TO WIN! His back is against the wall on this chip. The ball is right on the cusp of the fringe and the rough. Not an easy shot. And to top it off, the green has a major dip from back to front (left to right if you're watching it and front to back from tiger's perspective). Tiger has to measure every element of this near impossible shot and the audience is just mesmerized and lays in waiting. And then...
In the complete silence,
Tiger lines up to his ball, gives a few practice waggles, resets his footing and swings away. The ball comes up quick and lands about 15 feet behind the hole (left if you're looking at it, behind in actuality). 'It's going in' Tiger thought, before anyone else knew. And as the ball started to break hard-right. The audience starts to mumble and the volume rises, slowly as the reality of this possibility started to seem inevitable. And the ball rolled slowly, looking as though it might be a little short (right if you are looking at it, short if Tiger is) and then all the sudden it starts to curl back left and your toes do a little curl right along with it. But then, it doesn't look like it has enough and in fact... it doesn't.
It stops.
And everyone is completely silent and they start to think 'wow, what a good effort' and the 1/2 second feeling that 'wow that could have been something special' diverts your conscious for one second until the ball falls in the hole and everything you envisioned, after all the calculations and planning comes to fruition and all the crowd is yelling at the top of their lungs! And then you see Tiger Woods body is overcome with that same joy, only amplified and in that moment, he is completely and utterly unstoppable.
2. Google Breakup
This commercial puts to practice a good concept that's used in advertising called, enthymeme. An enthymeme is essentially a message that let's an audience fill in the back story and the take home point, without ever saying it'. What Google did here, was just that. They showed you a very common activity that you do every day and they made the consequences bigger. Even though all of us search for things on Google and use all the functions displayed in the commercial, we still liked to be reminded that there are bigger journeys that await us than just trying to find out 'Who's voice is Lois on Family Guy'. At some point, we will use Google to guide our journey through a fairytale of a story of adventure and learning and love.
And the beautiful thing is, Google didn't have to say any of that... for you to get the message.
1. Ebay Toy Boat Commercial
I have a hard time explaining this commercial without bursting into tears. It is by far the most powerful ad I have ever seen and I think the messaging is stellar. At face value, there is a story about a boy who loses his boat and finds it again on eBay years later. But this commercial speaks to something well beyond that. It hits on the complexity of the universe and the destiny for each memory and each relationship that we have. Even though we never see it, we can imagine the moment in which the boy discovers that he's lost his favorite boat. It's painful. It is in those moments, we ask:
'why did this happen to me?' and we are overcome with sadness. More importantly, we start to believe that is the end of the story.
A wise friend of mine recently told me, 'if the end was not what you expected it to be, then it probably isn't the end'. I think that is relevant here as we discover that every thing in this world and every person has a destiny that is in some correlated to our own. When we think we've gone off the path of our own destiny, we need something to come along that reminds us that we're still connected in a grandiose web that, in some way, that supersedes our ability to understand it. When you recognize this truth, you begin to see that there is way more to this story than just you. There is a greater force at work.
Ebay recognized this truth well before you did and that is why the tagline of the commercial is not
Ebay, 'happiness for all' or
Ebay, 'find your life'....
The message truly is...
Ebay, 'The power of all of us'
