High Five: UK

CONFESSION: My Marmite DNA test came back as a hater. But adam&eveDDB’s campaigns consistently keep me emotionally glued to the brand. In partnership with Mindshare and Kinetic, adam&eveDDB executed part deux of their striking and brilliant series of dramatic exploding billboards to celebrate the release of Marmite’s limited-edition flavours. To follow on from their first peanut buttery OOH campaign, February features their chilli-infused ‘Marmite Dynamite’ edition. The potency of the chilli has blown off the gigantic lid and hazardously transferred it from poster form into a monument in the concrete world. The tagline on the poster reads: ‘Love it, hate it, be careful with it.’ What's next Marmite!? 

The devastating presence of institutional and cultural racism within the UK is real and it is powerfully communicated in the many layers of FKA Twigs’ + Emmanuel Adjei’s co-directed promo for ‘Don’t Judge Me’. They take us on a journey of darkness, with Headie One and Fred again.. I’ve walked in circles around the 42-foot fountain by Kara Walker in the Tate Modern, ‘Fons Americanaus’, and been blown away by the multitude of bloodcurdling scenes depicting the horrors of the slave trade. Twigs chooses to open on this imposing sculpture and, interweaving it with shots of UK streets, she keeps bringing us back to  the fountain, with Black Activists in front of it looking ahead. Twigs herself is constantly dragged back to her starting position by an unseen force as she crawls, strides and strives in her physicality to push herself forward. Twigs’s movement, considered choreography and emotional performance conveys on so many levels the struggle and fight of the Black community against the unseen power and ‘invisible oppressor.’ The heart-wrenching plea of the song and the power of the video makes this a brave, bold and an important cultural piece.

Oh the Amazon commercial. The Amazon employee develops a steamy relationship with the smoke-show that is Michael B Jordan as she fantasises about him embodying Alexa, with him doing everything she asks. He seductively/robotically (yes it’s possible) removes his top as she orders him 'dim the lights'. The sexual tension mounts as her fantasy leads them into the bath together with him reading to her, while they stare into each other’s eyes. The comedy is elevated with the increased jealousy of her bamboozled boyfriend trying to intercept and undo everything she’s making Jordan do. Lucky Generals have made an inspired film, it’s brilliantly executed, the performances are hilarious, Michael B Jordan is on fire and the concept is amusingly relatable for anyone experiencing the desperate longing of lockdown escapism.

I love Los Perez. I’d love to live inside the pods of their elevated realities and the colourful, gorgeous aesthetic delights that they consistently dream up and devise in every film they make. In this new huge film for Coca-Cola, Los Perez teams up with Wieden+Kennedy London and Tyler, The Creator, to portray what it feels like to drink a Coke. The creatives at Wieden+Kennedy have nailed the idea of what we all need to drink into our eyeballs at this time; that being: music, energy, celebratory dancing, rainbow colours, and fun. The set, art department, costumes and music bring us into the heightened signature-Los-Perez-reality, with jiggling eyebrows and choreographed dances right up to the very last glistening drop of the ad.

Weetabix posted a ‘deeply offensive’ (quote: Ofcom) photo of a Weetabix biscuit dripping in Heinz baked beans on Twitter. The accompanying tweet read 'Why should bread have all the fun, when there's Weetabix?’ The ‘visual atrocity’ caused ripples across the net with many brands piping in with their respective denunciations. The NHS wrote that the photo 'should have come with a health warning' and other brands (and organisations including West Yorkshire Police) deemed it as ‘criminal.' It also sparked the prospect of other ungodly collaborations. Krispy Kreme and KFC contemplated a gravy-filled donut (VOMIT) and Papa John’s posted a photo of Weetabix bathing in garlic sauce and covered in Pepperoni (also VOMIT). In the wintery months of lockdown the idea brought much-needed playfulness and levity to the (breakfast) table.