Currently sweeping the awards ceremonies with THAT John Lewis ad, Adam and Eve must be on a bit of a roll - and this weekend they brought the first UK Google+ TV ad to our screens.
It launched in primetime, during Britain's Got Talent. A lot is resting on it. But I think it's a massive misjudgement. Have a look if you haven't seen already, then I'll do my best to explain.
First of all, the criticism has already been made that it's ridiculous that the social network's user interface will look exactly the same when the subject is an elderly man as it does when his child is born. But the bigger problem is that it is pitched both too high and too low.
Too high, because Benedict Cumberbatch reading Shakespeare, is, let's face it, going to go over the heads of a large proportion of the ITV audience. It's like the kid from the Thomson's Holidays multiplied by a hundred. Not to mention how chattering-class it all is; it was like watching the life of Nigel Slater's straight twin brother.
And too low, because anyone who does know As You Like It will be aware that the speech does not end with old age, it ends with senility and death - "sans eyes, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything". But the advert cops out (it edits out a lot of the rest of the speech, too).
If it had gone on to the bitter end, it might have had more emotional resonance, because as it currently stands, it leaves me completely cold. And again, its problem is in falling between two stools.
Take BBH's work for Google Chrome. It hits us on an emotional level because we know that Jamal Edwards and Dan Savage are real people, embarking on journeys which we know are authentic, and have affected real lives. Whereas "Tom" is clearly a character, a tool created for a purpose.
But a fictional character can be equally affecting, as Adam and Eve have shown - like the child from The Long Wait, or more pertinently, the life portrayed in "Always A Woman". So what's the difference?
We never learn their names. It's as simple as that. Unlike Tom, with his football refereeing and his mountain climbing and his rock band, we're not really given any detail about their "lives". Because those ads are not about a little boy waiting for Christmas, or about a woman's life from birth to old age. They're about us.
Whereas this Google+ advert is about some guy called Tom.
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