Planet of the Apes - Flip Reverse It

Dear me, a 5 day gap in posting. I need to get back into this, especially with the holiday coming up. There'll be fewer posts then, but I don't want it to lie entirely fallow.

Anyway, ads during the X-Factor final. Most had already been extensively scheduled, but one was new (to me at least) - the trailer for Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes on DVD and Blu-Ray.

The problem they had was that the cinematic release had already been heavily promoted on TV with action-packed trailers, and the audience could easily ignore another advert - especially if they'd already been to see the film.

So the advertisers (not sure if this was agency work or in-house) came up with 2 simple devices to get the viewer's attention and signal that this was something new. The first was to play the footage in reverse. The second was to have soothing music ("Sad Eyes" by Bat For Lashes) playing over it.

OK, so the second device was a bit cribbed from McCann SF's ace advert for Gears Of War (see second video), but it worked very well nonetheless.

Yoghurt WAR!!!

So, the first X-Factor live show, and the first big brand face-off sees a Dairy Derby in play. In the red corner (yes, we've moved from football to boxing) is BBH's new Yeo Valley spot:

It was probably never possible to improve on "big up your chest, represent the west", but it's a good try and very slickly done. Some nice touches too: the key change, the cheesy looks, serenading the cow, the fact that it's actually quite catchy, and so on. It isn't quite genius but it'll certainly go viral (#yeovalley was very quickly trending on Twitter during the show), and releasing it on iTunes will keep the publicity going and raise a little extra cash along the way. Also, early indications are that the farming foursome are fluttering the hearts of girl and gay alike.

In the blue corner, Muller yoghurts from TBWA, with a play for the nostalgia angle.

Props to the licensing and special effects departments on this one, they must have pulled a few late nights. It's certainly impressive, but you have to ask what part of it will stop people talking about Two Shoes' lipstick malfunction and actually sit still and watch it. It's certainly talked about less - "wunderful stuff" has only 117 results, and "Muller Yoghurt" only 887, compared to 22,500 for "yeovalley" (on a google search for results in the last 2 days), despite the agency's best efforts to start a rival trending topic.

A TKO, I think. Or 2-1. Something like that, anyway.