Lorie-Jo Trainer Buckingham of MOFILM picks her Desert Island Ads

Lorie-Jo Trainer Buckingham is ECD of MOFILM, a 10,000 strong community of professional filmmakers and creators from different geographies, backgrounds and cultures. MOFILM is owned by David Jones’ Brand Tech group You & Mr Jones.

Desert Island Ads

As an artist and ECD working in film I’ve selected campaigns that connect with me emotionally, are based on true insight into people and have stayed with me long after the TV spots aired. I hope you enjoy them as I do.

Nike – Nothing beats a Londoner

There is a sense that this campaign is not playing at being London but it is London. It’s got attitude, humour, competition, youth, creativity, diversity and huge amounts of energy. And this is due to the 258 young Londoners that have been cast in the film. It evokes such a sense of pride in being a Londoner and gives a mainstream voice to young people in areas like Brixton, Peckham and Hackney.

As a born and bred Londoner myself, this film accurately presents what growing up and training in these areas is like and it does it with unfiltered humour and skill that could only have been captured by working with the very people they were trying to target. They had a tough audience to connect to who have often felt sidelined or marginalised by mainstream media and they did the opposite, to great effect.

Sport England – This girl can

This was a campaign that sparked a trend of brands paying homage to the everyday; to the normal. However, it didn’t just present normality – it went further and made it aspirational, exciting and motivating. When I saw this advert it changed the way I saw myself, it changed the way I saw other women and it made me think that exercising is for everyone, not just the lean spandex-adorned model you see advertising trainers on billboards. That in itself is a triumph for any advertising campaign, but specifically this one.

Center parcs – I am dad

This advert cleverly plays on the insight that parents don’t always get to be parents; they have to be other people a lot of the time. It emphasises and gives value to the everyday acts of being a parent; putting a blanket around your child, blowing raspberries and making your teenager smile. However instead of focusing on these moments in a visual montage it entirely focuses on the dad, showing that this is about him; thus cleverly positioning Center Parcs as the people who understand entirely what it means to be a dad.

You’re doing great – SMA

This campaign recognises that nothing prepares you for being a mum – and that’s ok. Instead of showing idyllic footage of mum and new-born babies totally in love and enjoying each other’s company, it makes light of the realities of motherhood through a number of nuanced and highly relatable scenarios.

But the genius of this advert is in its narrative structure. It allows its audience to first feel seen by the brand through an accurate portrayal of the difficulties of motherhood and then, instead of selling something that claims to fix these problems or difficulties, it simply says “you’re doing great” – something new mums need to hear more than anything. Not a solution but an affirmation. This positions SMA not as a brand that simply knows about formula, but a brand that knows about mums. Which is a much more powerful place for them to be.