The expression of the dog when he noticed that the house he entered looked different was cute and priceless, especially when he went out again and checked the house number if it was right. I wonder how many takes did the creative team took just to get those perfect expressions. Clever dog too.
With this ad, the message was clear that once we get furniture, home decors, or interior design ideas from Ikea, our houses will surely look better that even a dog would notice. No wonder that the commercial won Film Gold during the Cannes Lions 2001.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Oh that isn’t a nice opening sentence for this review, but that surely caught the viewers attention on this Bridgestone Tire TV Ad. The element of surprise was there—a squirrel in the middle of the street screams after seeing a fast car approaching towards him. And a raccoon, an owl, a bunny, a mouse, a turtle, a deer, a grasshopper, and other squirrels in the forest all scream with him. Including the wife of the driver of the car. Good enough the squirrel is saved by Bridgestone Tires.
This Ad is a great example for the ‘animal magnetism’ I mentioned in the theme’s page. The use of talking or screaming animals in an ad acknowledge the man’s curiosity if animals converse or have feelings, thus he’ll watch the ad with amusement. However, the creative team has to make sure that product they are advertising would be remembered at the end of the Ad. To be effective it has to have a perfect execution, and a great copy. In this Bridgestone Tire commercial, the creative team did not fail. This commercial is one of the Top 10 Brand Commercials in Super Bowl 2008.
So earning the 2nd spot on IAG Top 10 Most-Recalled 2008 Super Bowl Ad is Thunder, with his bud Dalmatian dog. How touchy… Despite their differences—a dog and a horse—they were best friends.
Thunder almost got the job to become one of the main Budweiser horses, unfortunately, his boss changed his mind and his best friend came to the rescue. Thunder went training for a year, and his efforts paved off when he got the job a year after.
The creative team behind this commercial, really got excellent choices for background music to tell the mood of the story—a sad one, for being rejected; then a Rocky’s theme song while the horse was in training; and lastly, a victorious background music to tell Thunder was finally chosen as one of the main Budweiser’s horses.
In the whole ad, you wouldn’t see any Budweiser bottle, you just saw Thunder’s boss cap with Budweiser on it. And the Budweiser logo at the end of the ad. Sometimes, you don’t need to show the product especially if it is already known. You just have to reinforce the brand like in this case, they reinforced that Budweiser is ‘The Great American Lager’.
But I wouldn’t say that the horse training to become a capable main Budweiser horse wasn’t related to Budweiser beer itself. They were in fact related. Since a ‘lager beer’ is created by storing it for long time so it will taste better. In case of Thunder, his boss thought it was still not the right time, for him to become more capable as Budweiser’s horse. And his boss was right, Thunder still needed another year to become a great Budweiser horse.