GUINNESS ‘TIPPING POINT’ SETS OFF A CHAIN REACTION
November 9 2007, 10:57 am | | 43 Comments
A chain reaction from Guinness! The latest in the series of ‘Good Things Come to Those Who Wait’ ads, ‘Tipping Point’, via AMV BBDO London, was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig of Sony Bravia ‘Balls’ fame. ‘Tipping Point’, part of a £10million marketing campaign, is the most complex and expensive to produce Guinness advertisement ever. A celebration of community, the ad sees hundreds of villagers come together to create the ultimate domino effect, featuring 6,000 iconic black and white dominoes, alongside thousands of unexpected toppling objects.
43 Comments
So, correct me if I’m wrong, but a huge amount of objects interconnecting and rolling towards each other in a chain reaction seems vaguely familiar to another World class ad.Funny that.I’m also wondering why the hundreds of villagers would go to all that trouble simply to create a fucking great glass of Guinness.Bet the marketing department loved it though.
Now that’s an ad! Sure Honda kicked it off first, but that’s a big ad!
meh
But it is good?
He waits. That’s what he does. Tick full of tock…..But what a let down.
Ending was, to be frank, a bit of a let down…
Brilliant! Only the sad and resentful could think it was anything less.
Evolution was great. Full of Guiness values, totally relevant, brilliant all round.This is merely clever and not especially so.Yes, it’s like the Honda ad. And it always had me reaching for the remote.
Can’t say I love it.It’s better than plenty of other stuff out there but somehow I found myself yawning and waiting for the end.And yes I also thought it felt similar.Big ads are becoming a bit of a formula. Lots of people coming together, building to a climax/reveal. Could have been for any product also.Give me a bunch of dudes in penguin suits hitting beer bottles any day.
The Way of Things by Fischli & Weiss was the inspiration for The Honda Ad and subsequently this.
cog
Apparently a 10 million pound ad NOT campaign. Foycken ‘ell.
You bunch of jealous creative tossers. Can’t imagine you’d all have the same complaint if Aussie agencies had enough balls to even try and sell this. All way to worried about losing a client versus taking a chance and making a good spot. Aussie agencies have no balls along with no suits to sell good work. We do have brands like Guinness, we do have great creatives, we just can’t seem to sell it like AMV do. Back to that ad you know you can sell guys.
Utter ‘big ad’ ‘cog’ shite. Bring back small ads.
4.39. If an Aussie agency did this my guess is you’d be one of the first to say they ripped off the pommie iteration for cogs just like you did for big ad. Truth is, it is cogs, and it is big and it is expensive and it’s not overly original or as good as Guinness has done (by the English) in the past.
Yes it was a different variation on Cog, but it was fun! Punters wouldn’t make the conection. And why don’t you all stop putting shit on each other and grab a beer its friday afternoon, go and enjoy yourselves and stop being so F’n critical!
All good things come to those who create a domino effect with everything in sight and deliver what… a Pint of Guiness made up of books. Nice idea AMV if it had one. I see an agency now struggling creatively to continue on with a great campaign Strategy.
I didn’t think the end was worth waiting for.
yeeees clearly “cog” like ‘ creative inspiration’ and we have seen this before that too, but excuse me how did anything come close to spending 10 million pound!! in argentina with in peseant village.. mmm??? thats nonsense..its more hype than anything,.
You guys are like wolves. Like those guys in the Jim Jarmusch film, Dead Man. Picture the scene where William Blake walks into the campfire area; Iggy pop and Billy Bob and co are sitting, waiting for something, anything.”He’s my phillestine” one of the them yells, licking his lips upon seeing the sumptuous Blake. “I saw him first.”If Kubrick wrote A clockwork Orange tomorrow, half of you would say, “crap.”But then again, Kubrick is art, you’re in advertising. Wolves.EW x
Whatever you guys think of it, the fact is simple – it’s a beer ad that will win a Lion. Frankly, when you compare it to similar briefs that the Australian industry is producing – the Pure Blonde rubbish and the VB version of Honda Choir ad – I can see why you won’t be on the jury.
11:50pm “If Kubrick wrote A clockwork Orange tomorrow, half of you would say, “crap.”You’re joking right?
You’re my philistine! Kubrick didn’t write A Clockwork Orange. And Stanley isn’t doing much these days except lying around.That will not win a Lion. It’s impressive only in its scale. You could brew your own beer waiting for all those dominoes to fall. If you’re going to do the big setup and reveal the little bits along the way have to be compelling and be fun or interesting but these are pretty weak.
Except, 11.50, Kubrick didn’t write A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess did. Kubrick directed the film version (and did a great job).But it wasn’t his idea. Which is perhaps the point people are making about this Guiness ad.The thing with Guiness is that they have set their personal creative bar so high that mere executional brilliance isn’t enough.Yes, any brand and any other agency would be satisfied with the new ad. But Guiness isn’t just any brand.
So let me get this straight – VB ripped off Honda and then Guinness ripped off Honda. Shouldn’t the Honda guys open an agency and just call it “Beer and Cars”? to expand on that- why is it if VB (Australia) does it its fuckin genius, but if Guinness (somewhere over there) does it it gets slagged. Please be consistent with world views – otherwise you loose creditability and you look like an arse.
Poor spelling is another surefire way to lose credibility.
4.39, Keep living the dream baby. If I walked in to Guinness with the entire team from Boston Legal and that exact script. I don’t think, given the volume of sales down here, I’d be off to Argentina, La Paz or even the sand dunes in Far Kurnell.
Given the volume of sales? I think you missed the point. You must be a suit.
Utter fucking pants.Imagine this ad shot in South London, or indeed Sydney.The ad would be shite.Transport the ad to a yokel village in Argentina and it’s still shite – but it’s aesthetically pleasing shite.And the ending?What’s the story? Are these villagers worshipping Guinness as some kind of Godlike deity?Or is it, sigh, just another marketer’s dream.Man, what a stinker.
Not as good as a gorilla playing the drums, which I imagine was a bit cheaper.
“They laughed all the way through … “10:51 … What on earth were they laughing at? Were they all smoking bongs or something?And, they reckon this is much better than cog??? You guys definitely on rocks.
In reply to Anonymous’ comment – I’m sure neither advertising as an industry nor Honda were the first to employ the thoroughly pleasing Domino Effect to demonstrate a chain reaction or linear chain of events. Ironically, if we do disregard human and physical experience, and every single filmic reference to the same, perhaps Honda did kick it off first – as Anonymous suggests – and Guinness’ ad is merely the next link in a continued sequence falling ever onward towards bigger and BIGGER ADS.Give me nonlinear (chaos) theories anyday – if Boots don’t do me for copyright.
Cog was boring and irrelevant, and I’d switch channels half way through this one as well (probably earlier).And don’t tell me Honda invented the domino idea or the orchestra idea – both had been used many, many times before and will be used many, many times again. The Palace did a far funnier orchestra TBC for Smiths chips years before Honda and VB.Move on.
Hi 10:10 – This was merely an observation about an average punter, you know the people we sell too. I still think it’s a great ad. But I admit the price tag is a tad high. Someone can say “Cog” was inspired by Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dick Van Dyke’s nutty breakfast maker, (wow that’s a name I haven’t said in awhile).I don’t know – maybe it’s because I love that liquid bread that I think it’s a great ad.Cheers big ears!
Lots of whinging here. Whats wrong everyone? Wish you’d worked on it?
dl, I think you are confusing vocabulous loquaciousness with intelligent commentary.
I just love the fact that CB is engaging in a bit of cross promotion.
I’m sure everyone knows this already, but Cog owes more to an 80s tv show (Fischli and Weiss’s The Way Things Go?) than Dick Van Dyke. Went a bit like this…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDJTLAyTNw
It’s just a matter of getting your ‘inspiration’ from ads or from other sources. If we take inspiration from ads we completely diappear up our own arses.
Seems as though most of you have disappeared into your own arses. Just admit, you wish you’d been apart of it, regardless of what the inspiration came from.
12:47You’re in the wrong industry. Go away.
What 4.56? You think Honda invented the domino idea? You think they invented using an orchestra. You must be either 12 years old or a fuckwit. Or both. Cog was the most over-rated ad I’ve seen in years. The 30 was okay, but the 60 was unbearable. (Also, what did it say about the car? I could have done exactly the same ad with spare parts from a 1979 Commodore.)The Guiness version is at least interesting. But again, it suffers from being too long. I expect the version that goes to air will be more like 40 seconds, which will be a much better ad.Ah, but I suppose you only want people in the industry who ooh and ah over every clever thing we put on air. Sorry. We’re here to sell stuff. You can sell by entertaining, but Cog was neither entertaining nor breathtakingly original. It was just another ad.
Sorry 4.56. I agree with 12.47. The Palace ‘Smiths Chips’ ad from yonks ago was better, funnier and – most importantly – much more relevant to the product than either the Honda or VB spot. For a start, the orchestra or choir made music by eating and enjoying the product. (Damn radical idea that!) It wasn’t just a convenient gimmick. Oh, and it would have cost about 10% of the budget’s of the other two ads, probably less.I suppose you think I should get out of the industry as well.(I’ll bet the comment about being relevant to the product pushed me over the edge for you. I mean, what has advertising come to if people start talking about relevance and products!)