High Five Immortal Contenders: Marielle Wilsdorf on Germany

A young man enters a café that reminds us of a meeting point for the gaming community in Tokyo. He puts on VR glasses that catapults him straight into a game where he’s driving one of Ford’s new Kuga SUV models. It’s a super smart interpretation showing the vehicle’s plug-in hybrid function through the real and the virtual sphere. The two worlds of driving - electric and combustion - are seamlessly combined.

Zalando’s ‘Here to Stay’ campaign aims to foster dialogue on core values such as diversity, inclusion and women’s empowerment, as well as broadening views on topics such as gender fluidity and body positivity. It celebrates those who stay true to their beliefs and take a stand for lasting progress. It’s coming with that powerful self-evidence about all those important topics at exactly the right time. And I love the play with the media mix.

This campaign tells the story of an older man who makes some effort to get fit in the weeks leading up to Christmas. At the end of the commercial, there’s a surprising twist about the reasons why he’s pushing himself beyond his physical limits. The story grabs you because it’s so moving, and is staged with great attention to detail. Christmas 2020 was a Christmas like no other, because human values - such as family and health - were really brought to the fore.

I had to give a shout out to this one, although it’s not connected to an agency, but it’s just hilarious. In this spot, we find ourselves on the set of the new OATLY advertising campaign, in which three animals - a squirrel, a mayfly and a pony - have been cast in the ads for the milk alternative. But there’s just one problem: the animals are impossible to work with on set. It’s a true stroke of genius from the ad department.

This shows once again how less is more. MINI stands for an urban lifestyle with maximum experiences in a minimalistic space. They used what makes the brand timeless and unique, to create a feature communication built from the wings in MINI’s iconic logo and turned it into a versatile design to communicate the new features and assistants, as simplistic and iconic as the car itself. The brilliance is in the way this makes rather complex features easy to grasp, where before they may have been hard to understand.