Auteur ads survive and thrive in the YouTube era

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/emma-brockes-blog/2013/sep/19/auteur-ads-youtube-era

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It's been a good few weeks in advertising, with two campaigns deservedly generating huge interest and doing what commercials so rarely do these days: invite repeat viewing.

The Chipotle Scarecrow, a three-minute, Tim Burton-esque animation divised by the Oscar-winning studio Moonbot to sell the Mexican food chain's new app, is the more finessed of the two – a sort of sweeping Grapes of Wrath scenario, starring an expressionless man made of straw. (It is to the film-makers credit that at no point in the storyline does he eat a burrito.)

<br />But it's the Thai cellphone tear-jerker, watched by 5 million people in the last week, that has the broader reach and appeal. (It is genuinely tear-jerky. I watched it in low resolution on a cellphone and, when the twist came at the end, was mortified to find myself welling up.)

<br />Given how ad-savvy we are these days, and how resistant to tricks, the interesting thing about both of these campaigns is how un-gimmicky they are. Both ads are good in what feels like an old-fashioned way: good scripts, tight story arcs and high production values. Tonally, they are flat; no irony, no sarcasm. Paradigms are not being subverted. Nothing is being disrupted.

In the Chipotle ad, the Henry Fonda character moves through a world of faded 1940s colours, observing a dull, standardised landscape where nothing fresh or new flourishes. It's a boilerplate conceit in food advertising – as is the idea, in the cellphone ad, of pay-it-forward – but both are exquisitely rendered, a reminder in these slipshod times that quality still shows.

A lot of the success of the Chipotle campaign is down to the Fiona Apple theme, a great cover of the song Imagination from the 1971 film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which, in this version, goes from a cracked beginning to a soaring, big-screen climax. Initially, the makers aimed to have it re-recorded by Gene Wilder, who, they explained with the sobering amazement of the twentysomething, "is still alive".

They also expressed surprise at what a phenomenon the ad has become. One believes them. As we know from those excruciating challenges on Celebrity Apprentice, in which team members were asked to create a viral video, when these things are done cynically, they always boil down to a case of kittens or dwarfs.

Of course, there is something cheeky about Chipotle, a chain with 1,400 restaurants in the US and now rolling out into Europe, playing on antiglobalisation sentiment. Although the advert's environmental message is sound, it is obviously in the service of less pure intentions. As advertising wisdom dictates, these days, both campaigns would quite like the viewer to forget that she's being asked to buy something; the branding is very discreet. In fact, the makers of the Scarecrow ad discussed whether even using a red pepper, Chipotle's icon, was too overt a reference to their client.

For Brits of a certain vintage, all of this can't help but bring back misty memories of the greatest tear-jerker ad of all time, the Yellow Pages TV campaign from the early 1980s. Watching the elderly JR Hartley's resolutely pre-internet odyssey to find his out-of-print book on fly-fishing will break your heart in several places at once ("No luck, dad? Ahh, never mind") – mostly for reminding you that you grew up in the last century and are now incredibly old. Enjoy.

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