The Guardian’s open journalism approach highlighted by Three Little Pigs spot via BBH
March 3 2012, 10:06 pm | | 34 Comments
The Guardian’s open journalism approach is highlighted in this ‘Three Little Pigs’ fairy tale, via BBH London.
The spot, surely destined to win Gold (or better?) at Cannes, was directed by Ringan Ledwidge via Rattling Stick.
34 Comments
Awesome. Grandprix
This is the sort of ad that reminds me we’re still merely just a colony.
One of the best stories I’ve seen in a long time.
I could have done this much better.
A good, brave client certainly helps getting great work out. Well done.
Only if we did.
Totally agree with the first 3 comments.
Fuck me, this is brilliant. GP for sure.
I wouldn’t call us merely a colony (best job in the world and earth hour are both fairly recent, Australian Eric Quennoy shaped last years Grand Prix) however I don’t wish to make excuses for our TV output.
Australian clients simply don’t have the money to allow creatives the time necessary to craft and produce brilliant TV spots. Unless of course we’re talking beer ads.
Well done to BBH, this is a brilliant, fresh and well produced execution of a very worn strategy.
Yeah we’re really pushing the boundaries at the moment aren’t we.
This is tops.
So nice to see a big TV ad, and not some crappy case study video, trying to make some crappy social media idea look less crappy, which seems be what most agencies here in Australia specialize in these days.
A PROPER AD THAT’S AS GOOD AS THE CLASSIC GUARDIAN ‘POINTS OF VIEW’ AD FROM THE 80’S(?) – I AGREE WITH ‘I LIKE THIS’ –
AWESOME!
Me likey
Any guesses the budget on this?
Must be $5m + at least?
Great spot, but do all the people who are calling this a GP really think it’s in the same league as Write the future, old spice, noitulove, etc? Really?
Life would be so much easier without them.
Written by two (Canadian) colonialists?
Brilliant work. Just brilliant.
Here’s something worth considering though. The SMH ran a reader’s poll on this spot, with the following results:
58% said it’s brilliant.
13% said it’s good.
9% said it’s ok.
7% said it’s inappropriate for the brand.
13% said it’s bad.
Which means that, even if you somehow manage to make the best commercial in the world, 20% of people will think it’s shit, and another 9% will think it’s just ok.
No-one ever agrees on the work, which is fair enough.
But it’s scary to think that all it takes is for one person (the client) to be one of the individuals who doesn’t personally enjoy it, and it just never gets made.
And definitely food for thought for any timid clients out there: you just have to accept that there will ALWAYS be people who slam your work in a focus group. ALWAYS.
No matter how good it is.
Another piece of brilliance from BBH’s ‘Super Bowl – Super Social’ approach, just like their outstanding work for Yeo Valley:
Create great pieces of broadcast advertising (the ‘old-fashioned’ TVC in a high rating program) which people actually want to talk about. And now they can – social media is merely the missing addition to what already worked.
As Ben Fennell said it’s not about replacement media it’s about enhancement media.
an instant classic
F*ck me vicar. Brilliant idea, exquisitely executed. Like with all truly great work, when i saw this a little piece of me died. Jealous as hell (‘scuse the blasphemy)
I’m guessing not a lot of people here read The Guardian. This is an incredible spot, but massively off-brand. Still, won’t stop it picking up at loads of international awards, and doesn’t stop me admiring it.
twiglet,
In what way is it off brand? It manages to give a left-leaning perspective at every step of the way. The traditional baddie turns out to be an innocent victim of the system, and when the pigs are exposed, they then once again bypass individual responsibility to blame the banks for pigs killing wolves. Seems very Guardian-esque to me.
But you are right, I am not a regular reader so would be interested to hear how you feel it is off-brand.
I’m a pom and have been reading the Graun for 20 years +. This is completely on-brand for a publication that is now so multi-faceted, innovative and above all campaigning. Leveson would never have happened without the Graun, neither would the Ian Tomlinson inquest.
I can’t see a publication or a commercial of this standard ever coming from these shores. But at least you’ve got great beaches mate!
My two cents worth. I liked it and was interested to see what else The Guardian had to say. My teenage kids took a serious interest as well…….
It’s been shared half a dozen times on my limited facebook friend list in the past two days.
I think it is funny the SMH doing the survey. They’ve been offered stuff like this but don’t have the guts.
Love it.
Oi twigless pomme. Please, for gods sake, go home to your ‘important’ publications and ‘brilliant’ commercials. Nobody here cares what goes on in old Blighty. Nobody here, nobody anywhere else in the world. Make your worthy, chatty ads about worthy, chatty newspapers. Waffle on about ‘football’ and how everything’s ‘bang on’ at tescos, but don’t fool yourself that anyone else cares. It’s a good ad, f*ck it’s probably a good newspaper, but you’re all such whinging homesick a$$holes that everyone else cultivates an active disinterest in you, your pissant country, newspapers and ads. Know this.
Hey Pemulwuy,
When you’re sick of the sight of the same bloody beaches, glum gum trees, and red dirt everywhere, buy yourself an airplane ticket (they’re the winged bird things in the sky btw) and pop over to where people did a bit more than sit on the arse for forty thousand years.
Won’t take you long to understand what all the fuss is about, or change your accent, so that after just two weeks your nasal Ozzie drivel sounds rather charmingly like some chipper little cockney, who’s lived in Larndan his entire farkin life, like.
You utter, utter twat.
I feel the need to seriously object to the hypocritical, small minded racial bigotry of ‘Traveled Much?’.
I doubt he or she has ever met an Aboriginal, knows anything about their culture or even likes Australians. So I’ll join with Pemulwuy in saying ‘fuck off you miserable whinging fuckwit’ before a real Bondi local takes it on himself to job the cunt, which has possibly already happened a few times.
Didn’t pick up at the Andy’s. Finalists just got announced.
http://www.andyawards.com/shortlists/2012-andy-shortlist-
Happy to travel to twat you and the other ignoramus. Name the place, bro.
Been a while since I did the world trip but one thing I can say is the British are universally loved everywhere they go.
Unlike the Aussies. If a European thinks you’re Aussie he’ll pretend not to speak English, but if you’re British, he’ll go out of his way to help you, before saying ‘Sorry, I thought you were an Aussie at first.’
Hate Aussies. Won’t even serve them in France. Arrogant lot those Aussies, even the Greeks can’t stand them:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/13/british-tourist-killed-zakynthos-greece
The whole picture? The Guardian? If you used to write for Pravda, perhaps. The only thing more deluded than this ad is the leftist shit the Guardian purports as the truth.
Its off brand because it buys into a sensationalist shock heavy view of media reporting which the guardian has always tried to sit above. Great spot just not quite right for them.