Steve Reeves' Favourite Commercials

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Creatives write great, award-winning scripts all the time. Brilliant, funny, heartfelt words that capture the zeitgeist and that are sure to get people to really empathise with the brand they represent.

Unfortunately these scripts hardly ever get made.  Most commercials that make it on air have one word in common - compromise.   

""Can we just add another 25 words to the voiceover?""  

""The client thinks the joke is getting in the way of the product points, so can we look at a cut without it?""

""I know we said we'd never use it but can we just see the product demo in the cut?""  

Everyone knows the story.

Of course the disappointment of work being compromised makes the joy of getting something out that’s unencumbered, even sweeter.  

It’s what creatives and directors live for - the chance to make something pure and beautifully simple.  

Something you can enter into Cannes...

Volvo Trucks Epic Split

How amazing is that Volvo truck advert? 

It manages to be simple, ridiculous, cool and funny all at the same time. 

I first saw it was when it was sent to me by my 14 year old son. He’s obviously not in the market for a 28 tonne truck, but the fact that a niche truck commercial was being shared around a South London school, goes to show how something brave and different can really get peoples' attention all over the world. (100 million hits apparently).  

It’s got JCVD in it and a track by Enya, FFS - but it actually says loads about the product, you really get a sense of the precision engineering that goes into a Volvo.  

Awe inspiring - so naff - yet so cool.  

If only Danny McBride was in it.

Save the Children First Day

This commercial is outstanding. It captures a moment as good as anything that you’d see in an Oscar winning movie.   

It’s so brilliant because it’s true and whoever wrote the script has done so with such clarity and simplicity that nobody can fail to be moved by this film.

We see a woman give birth to what appears to be a still born baby.  The shot of the mother sobbing with her back to the camera is brilliantly edited. The shudder of her shoulders says everything in a very understated way - it’s heartbreaking. 

Our fear that the child is dead is confirmed by a title that says ‘For a million newborns every year, their first day is their last’.  

We then see the midwife rubbing the baby's back and miraculously, it starts to cry.  

It’s a beautiful and uplifting ending to what at first appears to be a very harrowing film.    

Everyone knows that third world countries need more medical help, but I’ve never seen anything make this point in such a powerful, or positive way. 

St John’s Ambulance Save the Boy

This film does the complete opposite to the Save the Children commercial, but is every bit as effective. 

We see a terrible accident, where a small boy falls from a tree in front of his dad.  

We assume that help’s on the way in the form of a St Johns Ambulance first aider, but we’re wrong.  

We’re looking at two different lives, in two different places and rather than saving our boy, our heroine is actually saving her washing from the rain. The father is left alone, helpless and unable to do anything for his injured son.

For any director that’s into performance and storytelling, this is a dream script

With such elegant and clever writing, it’s like a moment from a great movie.

Beautifully directed, with brilliant casting and performances, the director has respected the simplicity of the script and the story’s told with a minimum of shots.  

It’s great that the client allowed the ending to remain so bleak - it really makes you think.

Honda Hands

It’s every client’s dream - 'Let’s make a film that shows every product we’ve ever made, back to back’ - a pack shot porn-fest.  
 
Somehow the creatives have managed to answer this nightmare brief in a completely original and captivating way.

I love this film.

It’s so pure and simple, yet manages to show practically every product that Honda has ever made in an utterly mesmerising way.  

The sound design and editing are also superb.  

As an ex-creative and performance director, I really appreciate stuff like this, as to be honest, I wouldn’t have a clue how to direct it.  

This film can entertain people anywhere in the world. It’s snappy, neat and universal.

Like all Honda commercials nowadays, it continues to make what was once a pretty naff brand, pretty cool. 

Old Spice Momsong

One of the stupidest commercials I've seen for ages - and that's why it's so absolutely brilliant. 

A series of mums sing a lament about how their sweet little boys are now growing up to become men.

We see them hiding in different moments of their sons’ lives, as they watch them doing 'man stuff' like driving cars, meeting girls and chilling on the beach. We see the mums behind curtains, on the beach, even sharing the body of the school’s janitor.

It's mental!

It must have been such a laugh to work on, every scene has something funny in it - 'Smellcome to Manhood' - GENIUS

Like all the best comedy, this film is so beautifully crafted. From the lyrics of the song, the wardrobe, the casting, to the mum's funny voices and the naive visual effects, everything has been carefully considered to be as funny as possible.

The creatives haven't been worried about being cool - they've just had a laugh and that's what actually makes the commercial so cool.

Like all the best commercials, it's based on the truth - the observation that mum's are absolutely gutted when their cherubic little boys suddenly, from out of nowhere, start to wear cheap deodorant and turn into men.  

I should know, as I write this, I have a teenage son sprawled across the sofa in the next room watching Family Guy stinking of Lynx (or Axe, depending on where in the world you live).

Axe Make Love Not War

It's shot in a much more elegant and cinematic way than the Old Spice commercial and it needs to be, because it's making quite a claim - that the 'Axe Effect' can bring world peace.

The film shows different situations around the world where there appears to be a major conflict.  

We see a tank rumbling through a war torn city, a Korean looking dictator watching a formidable army parade, an Arab leader about to start a nuclear war.

We then realise that these scenes are not about war, but love - our protagonists are actually rather good looking guys who are only interested in making loving gestures to the sexy woman that happen to be close by.

It's actually quite a romantic film and because it’s so well crafted, feels rather hopeful and up lifting. I really liked it and it feels a lot cooler and more modern than previous Axe commercials.

To be able to write any of the above films you obviously have to be creatively brilliant.

But to be able to get these ideas actually made and out there, to be enjoyed by the world, you have to fight against compromise.

Fight for your creative rights

You can tell that the creatives who worked on these films have literally thought about and fought for, every single second, of every film. 

When you see work like this, you realise just how brilliant advertising can be and how lucky Clients are to have such talented people working for them.  

The process is so intense for creatives and directors, that on the rare occasion that we actually get to make something really good, we often forget to congratulate each other on what’s been achieved.

That’s why Cannes is so important.