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Are these the best two ads of 2015?

We started scoring ads – from all over the world – on MAA’s creative scale about a year ago. Obviously there are more British ones so we can’t say that every goodie from around the world has been looked at.

But the two highest points scorers – so far, we may yet be surprised before the end of the year – are AMV BBDO’s ‘Mog’s Christmas Calamity’ for Sainsbury’s (9.5) and Brothers and Sisters’ Thierry Henry ‘Time Machine’ ad for Sky (9.25).

There’ve been far more nines than expected and we’ll show as many of these as we can over the next couple of weeks.

So were we right about these two?

Mog has rivalled adam&eveDDB’s Man on the Moon effort for John Lewis in both national and social media for impact, just as AMV and Sainsbury’s did last Christmas with their ‘Great War’ epic, up against A&E’s ‘Monty the Penguin.’ Which tells you a lot about these two ‘frenemies’ within Omnicom.

Both Mog and Man on the Moon have proved more popular with people outside the business than in, but there are a lot more of the former of course. Wieden+Kennedy’s Neil Christie thought Mog was ‘boring’ in his magisterial round-up of Christmas ads, a view taken by at least one luminary based not a million miles from London’s Bishops Bridge Road. Although said source did acknowledge it was “cute.”

I think it’s a pretty impeccable piece of advertising, original and on-message. Maybe it could have been a little shorter but there may be cut-downs running. These big productions can easily fall on their nose, but they rarely do when either of these two agencies is at the helm.

One of the trials of this life is having to view endless crash-bang-wallop football ads and promos. They’re all so fixated by the supposed excitement of the game (and, in the case of promos, the need for Sky and BT to justify the zillions they spend and rake in from it) that it all becomes rather tiresome. Applies to betting ads too.

But Sky and Brothers and Sisters produced something markedly better when they inserted new Sky pundit Thierry Henry (arguably the best player to grace the Premier League although his punditry is struggling to match) into its pre-season campaign.

OK, you can see the joins in the film if you look hard but that’s inevitable.

Still a good judgement? Think so. It’s exciting, dammit.

Views, as ever, very welcome.

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