Disclosure: My brother worked on this ad, but that is in no way any reason for the below post.
I love the old Warner Brothers cartoons, they are briliant examples of when cartoons were treated with respect instead of being mass farmed out to Asia while all aspects of creativity are slowly chisled out.
That said, they were also good at creating characters; and the new Virgin Media ad is a great example of how to take an existing character and make it relevant to a brand strategy (as opposed to just shoehorning in a famous character for creative). If you want to suggest fast broadband, then who better than the fastest mouse in all of Mexico?
I also love the use of the anti-ad; the acknowledgement that Speedy is whoring himself out for the advertising industry. The writing is mainly setting up the story but leaves room for a couple of good sight gags and a magnificent cheese pun.
Speedy is on Facebook too, bringing an already vibrant character to life even more. If they get the writing right of course... but they have so far.
My only real criticisms are really more about the cartooning industry in general than this ad, so I'll leave that for another post.
This is great work by DDB. The campaign and strategy have the potential to run and run until they make Speedy Gonzales look like Regular Gonzales (as my brother would say).
1 comment:
Great to see the video. I miss the old cartoons!
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