Battle of the US Heavyweights
Two of the hottest agencies on the planet right now are Crispin Porter & Bogusky and Droga5. Both winning bucketloads of awards. Both demonstrating admirably how to reconcile ‘traditional’ advertising with digital. CPB’s recent ‘Whopper Sacrifice’ Facebook app (quickly culled by Facebook because it became fairly contentious) won a pencil this year. And Droga5’s philanthropic ‘Millon’ campaign (helping underachievers in the poorest performing schools in New York) and ‘The Great Schlep’ (encouraging elderly Jewish voters to support Obama) both won Black Pencils. So here are their latest TV spots, which we thought it would be interesting to compare.
First into the ring is CPB’s Christmas ad for the mighty GAP.
What’s that? The sound of millions of toes curling in unison? To be fair, not everything travels well across the Atlantic and all I can think is that this must be one of those things that you have to be American to appreciate. Interesting to note the politically correct approach to the ‘Christmas’ season too. So not only do we get a nod to Christmas, but also to Hannukah (Jewish), Kwanza (African) and Solstice (Pagan?). Now everyone can wear a GAP Christmas jumper and no-one’s left out in the cold.
Moving on quickly to Droga5’s non-seasonal offering for a packaged goods company called Method, which is aiming to encourage support for a US bill concerning clearer labelling on products. And yet again, the Americans display their unrivalled mastery of humour. OK, so anthropomorphic shenanigans are nothing new. But the writing, performance, animation and general all-round craft takes it to another level of laugh-out-loud genius.
Final score CPB 0 Droga5 1.