McDonald's - Passing By

It takes a confident brand to commission an ad that celebrates its popularity and reminds people why they love it, but that is what McDonald's did with 'Passing By'.

The ad, set to a poem, observes customers from all walks of life visiting a restaurant at varying times of the day and night, and highlights how they enjoy the experience. It aims to show the emotional and practical roles the brand plays, with the message 'There's a McDonald's for everyone'.

The ad's simplicity and effectiveness have been recognised by Thinkbox's Creative Academy of industry experts, who have named it the winner of the September/October Thinkboxes award.

McDonald's chief marketing officer, Jill McDonald said: 'We wanted [the ad] to be confident about our role in modern British life. We wanted it to be authoritative. It is the right time for the brand to be modern and creative.'

Judge Laurence Green, chairman of Fallon, said: 'It's everything a great TV ad can be: engaging, insightful and gently persuasive. Here's a brand that not only knows its audience but likes it too.'

Members of the Academy voted McDonald's the winner from an impressive shortlist.

Second place went to the Department for Communities and Local Government's Fire Safety ad, 'Breathe', which aims to demonstrate the dire effects of smoke inhalation by comparing it to drowning.

Third place went to Tesco Mobile's 'Freedom', which takes a sideswipe at over-elaborate mobile phone ad campaigns and instead focuses on price.

'We wanted to be confident about our role in modern British life. We wanted it to be authoritative. It is the right time for the brand to be modern and creative.'

Jill McDonald
Chief Marketing Officer
McDonald's

• Client Jill McDonald, chief marketing officer, McDonald's
• Brief To remind everybody what they love about McDonald's
• Ad agency Leo Burnett
• Creative team Jim Bolton, Tony Malcolm, Guy Moore
• Production Moxie Pictures
• Director Neil Gorringe

Other ads on the podium

CLG Fire Safety - Breathe

In this appropriately eerie, blue-suffused film, the dangers of house fires are highlighted by likening a death by smoke inhalation to the respiratory effects of drowning. Shot underwater, in chilling slow-motion, the ad depicts a man and wife quietly asleep in their bed. Atmospheric shots of the pair's close environment - a child's toy floating down the hallway, a cup of tea on the bedside table clouding the water around it, bedsheets billowing in the current, the woman's long hair moving languidly like strands of seaweed - are accompanied by a voiceover, which explains: "You'd think you'd wake in a house fire, wouldn't you? But just two to three breaths of toxic smoke and you're unconscious. Your lungs fill up, just like drowning." The shot cuts to the same couple in bed but enveloped by a raging fire as the voiceover encourages viewers to test their fire alarms on a regular basis.

Tesco Mobile - Freedom

This spot parodies the vacuous pseudo-profound gibberish that some advertisers in the telecoms and IT world sometimes find themselves succumbing to. The tone is set as the ad opens with a tracking shot pulling in to a fearsomely sincere couple sitting on a bench by a treefringed placid lake. "We want to live in a world where we communicate with everybody… and nobody," they intone in unison. Other examples of the genre follow in quick succession - but the psycho-techno-babble is eventually punctured by a Welsh bloke who says that, to be honest, he just wants unlimited mobile use for £30 a month. Which, of course, Tesco is able to provide. The brief was to use the launch of an unlimited tariff as a means to raise the broader awareness and credibility of Tesco mobile as a network provider, while positioning the brand as a no-nonsense alternative to the major networks.

Also shortlisted for September / October 2009

DCSF - Help Give Them A Voice

This campaign for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, launched in conjunction with a high-profile government PR initiative, seeks to give a voice to vulnerable children and adults while also spearheading a drive to recruit more than 5,000 social workers. The ads feature well-known performers taking on the voices of people in vulnerable situations - and depicting the emotional force of their testimonies. The films are designed to help people think again about what social workers do and to encourage people who think they could make a difference to apply to train as a social worker. A wider recruitment drive by the Children's Workforce Development Council will follow. As well as supporting recruitment, the Government is committed to making sure that social workers have the training, support and capacity they need to practice to the highest professional standard.

O2 - Money The Shop

These cleverly written spots were created specifically and uniquely to run in one programming environment - Hollyoaks. The challenge was to devise an innovative campaign for the launch of O2 Money's Load & Go that would strongly appeal to the core Hollyoaks audience by referencing up-to-the-minute storylines from the programme. So there are 20 executions - and in themselves they become a sort of parallel soap to Hollyoaks - but the two ditzy shop assistants featured here are clearly fans of the programme and refer to it directly and indirectly. There is, after all, a TV set on the shop's counter. "It's all going off at the Dog," says the boy, who can barely tear himself away, at the start of one spot. Or, similarly engrossed and outraged: "Don't go anywhere near her Steve! She just wants your kid! Think of its future!" The main objective was to drive viewers online to find out more about Load & Go.