Desert Island Ads
Nike: Write The Future
Nike’s staggering spot for the 2010 World Cup is a full-fat, turbo-charged blockbuster and in this writer’s humble opinion – the last of the “great” World Cup ads. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Write The Future is a tour de force. A dizzying journey of exuberance and a love letter to the beautiful game.
For me, this ad captures an interesting inflection point. 2010 was a time when TV still ruled. Social media was ascending but in its relative infancy. Sporting narratives were still driven by traditional media and brand. It was the very last moment that an ad quite like this could be made.
The hype when this dropped was incomparable to anything I can remember. The star-studded cast, Rooney’s hero-to-zero-to-hero plotline and cameos from Federer, Kobe and Gael García Bernal bottled the feeling of a summer of infinite potential.
This was an especially iconic World Cup for so many reasons. Write The Future showed what the burning terminal velocity of a football spot could be and set the stage for an unforgettable tournament.
16 years on, and I don’t think it’s been bettered, despite Timothee Chalamet’s best efforts for Adidas.
The Balcony/Kendrick Lamar and Ray Dalio for Cash App
This ad was an inspiration and a north star at a difficult time in my career. I had just stepped into a senior brand side marketing role in fintech and felt markedly uninspired by the cookie cutter campaigns in the industry that focused solely on extolling the intricacies of product, APR and interest rates.
Cash App showed there was a different approach.
They’re a brand that has always been ahead of the curve in the payments space – and there’s no better example than this piece. Kendrick acting as the translator for finance guru Ray Dalio might not sound like your typical fintech ad and that’s what made it so good. Culturally-fluent and irreverent in the best way.
What I admired most was its confidence. I’m a big believer that some of the most effective marketing is the most difficult to measure. Cash App are confident that building cultural relevance would ultimately do more for the brand than another explanation of fees, rates or product features. In a category obsessed with functionality, they chose memorability instead.
Flat Eric/Levi’s
I have vague and hazy childhood memories of this being constantly on TV one summer when I was probably about 9. In hindsight probably quite a formative moment that informed my career and why I thought advertising seemed like a pretty cool job.
Thanks to System1, we’re all now hyper aware of the data behind distinctive brand assets and the need for culturally fluent motifs. But this harks back to a time where taste trumped everything. Chuck an iconic character in a car with Mr Oizo’s flatbeat and you’ve got something that will forever stand the test of time. Levi’s has undoubtedly produced more dramatic, head-turning work, but this one still does the job for me.
I’m very conscious that we live in an advertising bubble where personalisation has precipitated a long term shift away from the big idea to an ever-fragmented and disparate universe of assets, sliced and diced at scale. Going back to an old classic like this is a nice reminder that there’s power in a simple, wonderful idea. When the top YouTube comment is “I refuse to buy Levi’s jeans until they bring Flat Eric back” you know you’ve done a good job.
The Swedish Number
So much has been written about this campaign over the past decade, and rightly so.
Part campaign for the Swedish Tourist Association and part social experiment, almost 200,000 people called the number to be connected with random Swedes who signed up to be called on a website.
I love this campaign because of its very obvious but very powerful human truth: We’re all curious. We want to connect with people from other parts of the world because it helps make our own world bigger. Created to honour the 250th anniversary of Sweden abolishing censorship, and in the chaos of a post-Brexit, post-Trump world the concept of chatting to a random Swede felt like the perfect tonic.
Perhaps most importantly, the campaign understood that people don’t build relationships with places through facts, but through people. By turning ordinary Swedes into ambassadors, it transformed Sweden from a destination into a human experience, making the country feel more accessible, relatable and memorable than any tourism advert could.
Michael CeraVe
A masterclass in how to use a celebrity ambassador.
Unfolding over the month in the run up to the Superbowl and led by some brilliantly executed IRL stunts, Michael Cera.
The brilliance of the campaign was that it used a genuinely entertainment-led idea to earn attention, then used that attention to reinforce the brand’s strongest product credential. Communicating product truth is notoriously difficult, particularly in a category as functional as skincare. Rather than interrupting people with a message, CeraVe invited them into a joke.
What makes the campaign so effective is that the celebrity wasn’t simply a spokesperson bolted onto an existing campaign. Michael Cera was the idea. His name, persona and cultural relevance were inseparable from the creative platform itself. The result was a campaign that felt discovered rather than advertised, generating huge conversation while ultimately landing a simple message: CeraVe is developed by dermatologists, not celebrities.
It’s a great reminder that the best celebrity partnerships don’t borrow fame to sell a product. They create a piece of culture that makes the product message memorable.
Oscar Mackenzie is director of social and influencer at Jungle Creations.
