High Five: Abi Findlay

I was working at W+K Amsterdam when this came out. It blew me away. The premise, the writing, the production. Fast forward a couple of years later and I was working for The Girl Effect as its brand and creative director. Fast forward a couple of years into that and I met the writer who wrote it, asked her (and three other W+K Portlanders) if they’d move to Addis Ababa and come to help us launch a girl band in Ethiopia - and they did. And during that time, the writer, Jess, started the process of adopting an Ethiopian daughter. And all because I watched that film and thought, I’d like to work for that cause...

Way before my time and it’s still great. I love the fact it’s citing research, really simply and powerfully. Quite a marked difference from lots of the other Nike work at the time with athletes, mostly male. It led to a policy change in the US for organised sport for girls to be treated the same as boys.

Brilliant writing. It could have been a film all about trying. “If at first you don’t...” but it’s not - it’s all about failure. Excellent music, his amazing voice narrating. That’s a seriously motivating piece of film to a young aspiring athlete. To all of us, "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed."

It was 2012 - all eyes were on the Olympics and then this dropped for the Paralympics and it blew anything else out of the water. I love the Britishness, the art, the grit, the production values on this (the sound design under water, the ending gun sound sequence). It made me immensely proud to be a Londoner, a Brit. A spot-on example of when a brilliant ad can really change how the world thinks overnight.

A departure from the philosophical positionings I usually like, but I love this. The way it’s shot, the music, the stunt work, the reveal, being all in camera. Our advertising production industry at its best. I wish I’d sold that script through. I salute the client that bought it.