The Thinkboxes Winner - April 2008

Volkswagen Golf Enjoy the Everyday

The Thinkboxes is a new initiative that recognises the very best in TV advertising each month. The inaugural winner, voted for online by a panel of industry experts who make up the Thinkbox Academy, is the latest work for Volkswagen Golf, overseen by communications manager Morna Steel, and produced by DDB.

The car marque has followed up its recent campaign for the VW Polo, which featured a singing Jack Russell traveling in the front seat of a car with its owner, with the story of one man and his Golf.

The 40-second spot follows the man as he uses the car over several days. The ad has been edited so that the shots quickly interchange between one day and the next to emphasise how driving a Golf is part of everyday life. The driver is depicted arguing with his partner, listening to music and experiencing mild road rage. The commercial is accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Paul Hartnoll of dance act Orbital, which features sounds recorded in and around the Golf on the shoot. The ad finishes with the strapline: 'Enjoy the everyday.'

The Thinkbox Academy judges felt that this amusing and original ad was a thoroughly deserving winner of this month's competition, and it receives the first coveted Thinkbox trophy. Many congratulations to everyone involved.

Ad info

• Client > Morna Steel, Volkswagen
• Brief > Mk V Golf Run-Out Year
• Creative Agency > DDB London
• Writer > Noah Regan
• Art Director > Graeme Hall
• Media Agency > Mediacom
• Director > Scott Lyon

Other ads on the podium

Volkswagen Polo Dog

Created by Dylan Harrison and Feargal Ballance at DDB London and directed by Noam Murro, VWs second shortlisted spot shows a Jack Russell singing The Spencer Davis Group's I'm A Man while he rides in a Polo, and contrasts this confident behaviour with his lack of confidence outside the vehicle. Polo's trademark defensive idea of protection has neatly morphed here into the more lively idea of confidence. VW has had to weigh up one million-plus hits on YouTube against hundreds of complaints to the ASA, but it undoubtedly has an impactful ad here.

Audi Gymnasts

This commercial really sorts the girls from the boys. Girls tend to see gymnasts performing a set of (albeit rather austere and aggressive) Busby Berkeley-style routines; while boys see only visual representations of the high performance, high-precision parts of a machine - in this case, as it turns out, an Audi RS6. This film has hugely excited the gymnastic community, especially in Hungary it was shot in Budapest, featuring local talent. The creatives responsible at Bartle Bogle Hegarly are Toby Allen and Jim Hilson; the director was Paul Hunter.

Also shortlisted for April

Bombardier Fruit Machine

These sponsorship idents, created for the brand's association with AI Murray's Happy Hour on ITV, dovetail with Bombardier's wider England's Ultimate Icon initiative- in which customers were invited to vote on the person who best represents the pride of England. Winston Churchill eventually prevailed over competition from the usual and not-so-usual (Del Boy, Sooty, Roland Rat) suspects. The idents, featuring iconic names such as Charles Dickens in winning fruit machine lines, were devised by Ben Friend and Simon Brotherson at Mustoes and directed by Bitstate.

Budweiser Popcorn and Push It

In the first of these two films (both directed by Harmony Korine, with creative input from Chris Bovill and John Allison at Fallon), a group of 'good old boys" in a basement studio attempt to create a post-industrial version of the first-ever synthesiser hit, the 1969 classic instrumental Popcorn, with the drummer using beer bottles for drumsticks and other band members improvising with beer cans and bottle tops. They're urged on by the veteran musician Dave Cloud. The second film sees them meting out the pastiche treatment to an even more unlikely number - Push It by Salt-n-Pepa.

Cadbury Dairy Milk Trucks

Created, written and directed by Juan Cabral at Fallon, this spot features a collection of airport service vehicles borrowing a runway to stage a demolition derby. It is well shot, and it's always fun to imagine machinery having a life of its own after the humans have gone. Like its predecessor, "Gorilla", the spot stands out because it's long (one-and-a-half minutes) and uses an instantly recognisable track. The success of "Gorilla" can be measured by how many different versions and spoofs of the ad are floating around on YouTube. Is this in the same league? Use your vote to decide.

Crusha Gym Kittens

Crusha's entry, brought to you courtesy of the CST/Exedra team Anna Goodyear and Elaine Jones and directed by Joel Veitch, features animated kittens from the scariest end of the kitten spectrum -as you expect from a brand called Crusha. The scariness is probably something to do with the kittens' piercing blue eyes and the voiceover's gravelly Manchester accent pitched somewhere between Les Dawson and Bernard Manning. Crusha is in competition with the market leader Nesquik- which now, thanks to this commercial, is positioned as the milkshake for wimps.

John Lewis Inspirations

Four surreal performances created by Tom Hudson and Lee Goulding at Lowe London and directed by Gary Freedman for John Lewis. A huge green box falls open to the strains of English Country Garden to reveal a parasol; a dancer skips hither and yon across a stage, hugging and caressing her way through a forest of cushions on sticks; a girl in a ballgown elegantly descends a helter-skelter, then floats through the air to be deposited with a bump in a chaise longue; a Fred Astaire look-a-like doggy paddles upwards through the air towards a suspended chandelier.

O2 Oxygen

The animals go in two by two. Actually, in this film (Jonny Parker and Nik Stewart were the creative duo responsible at VCCP; Matthew Cullen and Grady Hall directed), they travel in a good deal more than pairs. Fashioned in one hypnotic panning shot, the film follows a message that begins life in 01 bubbles rising from beneath the surface of a pond and is carried, via the mouths of frogs and locust-like dragonflies, to a girl's teddy bear and out through a network of other bears to wolf-like dogs on rooftops baying at the moon.

Phillips Karis

This film unveils a Los Angeles based transgender dancer called Karis as the new face of the Satinelle Ice Epilator. It's a montage of Karis at work and at play, and in his voiceover he reveals that "the toughest bit about looking like a women would have to be my hair". The commercial's rationale is spelled out for us in caption boards at the end: 'Like all men he's not great with pain ... So he uses a Philips Satinelle Ice Epilator. "The DDB creatives involved included Neil Dawson, Grant Parker, Tim Charlesworth and Michael Kaplan. It was directed by Fredrik Bond.