Hot Spots

Michael Weinzettl previews a few remarkable commercials to be featured in Vol. 6-17 of Archive.

The next (and final for this year) issue of Lürzer's Archive magazine is coming out soon and today I wanted to give you a look at some of the 84 spots featuring in the Film section. This always consists of 60+ commercials from all over the world which have started airing in the previous months.

First up is our Spot of the Week from last week, Volkswagen's "Generations" film from Denmark. In it a man is persuaded by his mother to set off on a road trip with his rather cantankerous father in the latter’s old VW Beetle convertible. Out on the road together, they experience some very intense emotional ups and downs. As the journey continues, however, we gradually realize that the father recently passed away – and that the son is making this trip alone to relive those memories. To me this is one of the very best commercials of the year, and a prime example of sophisticated story-telling while the brand behind it is never overwhelmed but stays central to the spot.

Client: Volkswagen. Ad Agency: Very Agency, Copenhagen. Creative Director: Thomas Pries. Copywriter: Sune Svanborg Sørensen. Director: Sune Svanborg Sørensen. Production Company: Shoot Happens

Up next is another brilliantly made and bound to be very popular commercial – it has Christmas season written all over it. Deutsch L.A. has created it for Tile, a square bluetooth tracker that can be placed on items to find them when they are lost. The very emotional spot follows a lost toy panda's quest to be reunited with his owner. The campaign also includes posters starring the lost panda, a digital video featuring Ernie and his owner teaching consumers about how to use Tile, influencer content, and a children's book titled "Lost & Tile: Ernie's Journey," which will be released for the holidays. I used to think that a product with such a unique USP would not need to be advertised in such an elaborate (and surely expensive) way but what do I know? There may very well be lots of competitors around, I just haven't heard of them.

Client: Tile. Ad Agency: Deutsch, Los Angeles

GE’s latest ad by BBDO, New York, features a girl named Molly who comes up with various clever inventions that can do her household chores for her – such as taking out the trash which she clearly hates to do. With the help of a bicycle, some rope and a drill, she’s able to develop a system that allows her to send the trash to its respective can from her bedroom window. Over the course of the ad, Molly comes up with more ingenious inventions, such as an ATM-like booth that dispenses Girl Scout cookie boxes that she can operate from her room. As she gets older, her inventions become more and more sophisticated, and when she's all grown-up she lands a job at GE, where she impresses her supervisor by reprogramming some robots.

Client: GE. Ad Agency: BBDO, New York. Creative Director: Greg Hahn, David Lubars, Michael Aimette . Art Director: Eric Goldstein. Copywriter: Fred Kovey. Director: Production Company: Park Pictures

One can only hope no small animals were hurt or traumatized during the production of "Wow Girls' Lab" the X-Line agency in Taiwan for a sports bra by the Wacoal brand. This surprisingly charming, straight-faced oddity is certainly one of the most unusual product demos that I have seen in a long time., done very much in the style of a case film. It was mainly made for the Taiwanese market yet the titles in it are in Japanese. Apparently, Taiwanese women, especially younger ones, are vowed by all things Japanese. The video won a Silver at the Clio Awards in New York at the end of September.

Client: Wow Girls’ Lab. Ad Agency: X-Line,Taipei City, Taiwan

The final, and possibly most lavish commercial in recent months – and certainly in this preview – is also the newest It's been on air only a couple of days and advertises the highly anticipated collaboration between retailer H&M and Turkish-Canadian fashion designer Erdem. Titled "The Secret Life of Flowers," and directed by Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Australia, The Geat Gatsby), the four-minute über-romantic video takes place in the dreamlike country mansion where it's "always spring." Mirroring the Erdem for H&M collection, the mansion is filled with colorful blossoming flowers. A visual feast with the somewhat feeble storyline – a love triangle that unfolds after a luxurious dinner party – complete with paper-thin allusions to Charles Dickens Great Expectations and, perhaps even more so, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Client: H&M. Ad Agency/Production Company: Bazmark Inq LLC, New York. Director: Baz Luhrmann