Bestads Best of the Week Reviewed by Sinead Roarty, Executive Creative Director, VML Czechia
Each week Bestadsontv.com [the global arm of Campaign Brief] picks the very best advertising in the world, in every medium – which is reviewed by a top creative director or team to select their own personal favourites.
This week’s guest judge is Sinead Roarty, Executive Creative Director at VML Czechia.
Winner: Unibet ‘Let Sport Win You Over‘. This spot totally won me over. I was that kid who was always the last one picked for the sports team, yet I can’t resist kicking a stray ball. Neither can robots, it seems. It’s pure joy watching these dead-eyed, metallic threats to humanity suddenly get swept up in the contagious thrill of playing and watching sport. It’s ridiculous in the best way. Because that’s the thing about sport: it doesn’t care who or what you are. It just brings us together.
Runner-up: Pringles ‘Pringlelina: A Love Story‘. Another very human story featuring a non-human. In this follow-up to the ‘Pringleleo’ Super Bowl ad, our lovelorn hero creates Pringlelina, his perfect crush, er, crunch. Playful, absurd, and knowingly doomed, this takes playing with your food to a whole new level. And the comic timing lands perfectly.
Winner: IKEA ‘Welcome to the Home Cup‘. A reminder why great print still works. Simple. Nuff said.
No runner-up.
Winner: KitKat ‘Little Breaks‘. See what they did? The idea sneaks up on you. And in the process, you’ve paused, you’ve had a little break. The ability for a brand to show a smidge of its logo and have passers-by complete it with the tagline is marketing genius. The tag isn’t redundant; it’s just so baked into culture that people get what the brand stands for. Also great to see work where old-school craft is essential to the success of the idea.
Runner-up: Uber ‘Uber Reserve Towels‘. Fun use of a cultural insight. By draping beach towels over Ubers parked around London, it recreates the anxiety of the great British sunbed wars. A simple, relatable prompt to pre-book, before someone else does.
Winner: KUAISHOU ‘Streaming Out Loud‘. In China, deaf streamers are thriving but largely unseen by hearing audiences. Not because they’re not engaging, but because the platform wasn’t built to include them. Instead of asking creators to change, this changes the experience so that sign language becomes sound, in real time. A powerful idea with far-reaching potential.
No runner-up.
Winner: Black Heart Rum ‘The Shanty for Missing Chums‘. A rollicking sea shanty about the slow death of a night out. Brilliant (especially for a brand named after a pirate), because nothing cuts through flaky excuses like having them sung back to you as if you’re a useless deckhand. No guilt, just a rousing call to join the crew.
Like the best nights out, it’s loud, funny, and chummy. You get the joke instantly and suddenly you’re humming your own excuses on the way to the pub. It’s great to hear audio that is true to form; I just hope the 90-second version got proper airtime. More, please.
Runner-up: Meals On Wheels SA ‘Scone‘. I didn’t see (hear) the misdirect coming, which made it all the more charming.
Sinead has spent the past 20-ish years in creative leadership roles at agencies including Ogilvy, JWT, Wunderman Thompson, McCann Worldgroup New York, and now VML Czechia (AKA Bohemia). Before advertising, and as a hopeless insomniac, she worked nightshift in a queer bookshop, ran a small art gallery, was a university tutor, a very impatient Santa photographer, and briefly served as Chief Creative Innie at Lumon Industries (an experience she’s contractually unable to remember).
She’s sat on juries for Cannes Lions, LIAs, New York Festivals and Clios (to name a few) and was a jury president at AWARD and a PADC Chair. Along the way, her work has picked up at Cannes Lions, D&AD, LIAs, One Show, New York Festivals, Spikes, AWARD, Effies, etc, plus a cherished Logie nomination for Best TV Ad. Which is all very nice. But what she loves most is when the work has impact outside the jury room. Things like getting Durex to hijack Apple’s announcement to fix the ‘ducking’ autocorrect glitch. Luring Serena Williams to sing a breast cancer anthem for Berlei and the I Touch Myself Project (which reached over a billion people). Making a feature doco that challenged gendered parenting and made Avon the most loved brand in Brazil. Or kick-starting a global initiative for Subway that used tech to help feed 13 million people in need. That’s what really keeps her awake at night.
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