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New Commercial Arts’ Charlotte Prince and Loriley Sessions pick their Desert Island Ads

Charlotte Prince and Loriley Sessions are an award-winning creative team at New Commercial Arts.

Desert Island Ads

If we were stuck on a desert island, watching ads would probably be at the bottom of the pile.

Instead it would probably be the two of us deciding who does what to get us out of the mess, followed by the classic Creative Pair lovers’ tiff, then getting the job done well. We hope.

However, if we were stuck in a weird parallel universe where we could only reference a handful of ads for the rest of our career, this bunch would definitely be up there.

Speaking of weird, we’ve taken a strange yet wonderful journey to becoming creatives. Starting off in social, in fact even weirder – community management.

When you kick off your career by being told to f**k off 20 times a day by some random trolls, it creates a strange love/hate relationship for ads.

But one good thing it does do, (other than making you very thick skinned) is to always remember the conversation, and the importance of the people who watch it, read it, see it. Then depending on the brief, make them care, laugh, think, or whatever emotion you want to unlock. That’s our jobs after all.

1. Interactive: Survival Billboard, X-Box

We reference this piece of work a lot. It’s not just an ad. It’s interactive and integrated – key for keeping those conversations going. Ads can be found in all shapes and sizes, and this just felt different.

What better way to advertise a game full of grit and determination, than physically playing it in real life? God knows how those players did it, but at the time, you couldn’t take your eyes off them. That’s a lot of barely blinking eyes on X-Box…

2. Craft & Simplicity: Highlight the remarkable, Stabilo Boss

One thing we’ve learnt over the last few years that we try our very best to stick to – keep it simple. So for this example we’re going to do just that. The ad says it all.

3. Humour: Marmite Neglect

We are all a bit guilty of taking ourselves and our jobs a bit too seriously. After all, it’s just adverts. We’re not performing open heart surgery. So when humour is done well, it sticks out for the better.

The irony is, the more you laugh at an ad, the more someone somewhere has had a little cry trying to create it.

We especially love it when the creative is a bit risky with its humour. In our eyes, if you’re pleasing everyone, are you pleasing anyone?

4. Making a difference: The People’s Seat, United Nations

Creating ads with purpose should be about making a difference, not gaining awards. The industry is very guilty of creating work for awards’ sake that never sees the light of day. But equally, it’s also very good at rallying for a cause and doing something good.

The People’s Seat is one of those pieces of work. You don’t care that you didn’t make it. You’re just glad someone did.

5. From the Archive: Wassup, Budweiser

We’ve all been in a room when someone’s referenced an ad and you aren’t quite sure how to tell them you were four when it was made…

So this is a blast from the more recent past. To this day if we picked up the phone to this, we know exactly how we’d reply.

An iconic ad that’s even influencing culture today. This year Slowthai and Skepta parodied the ad in the opening intro of their track CANCELLED.

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