Best Ads of the Week: Post Malone’s punny Prime poster & Apple’s parent-pleasing promos

This week, Margaret Atwood takes aim at democracy’s fragility in a Financial Times video series, Motherwell FC courts Hollywood A-listers to attract investors and One Club for Creativity launches a braggadocious AI chatbot.

Apple: Relax, it’s iPhone by TBWA\Media Arts Lab

Tech giant Apple has added to its ‘Relax, it’s iPhone’ campaign with two new ads about the parental benefits of its latest device, specifically the all-day battery life and check-in features. Many parents will empathize with the check-in tool spot as a father nervously watches his daughter embark on driving herself to school for the first time. He anxiously waits to hear she got to her destination safely until a notification pops up on his phone, letting him know she has checked in.

The second ad features another father filming with his iPhone as his young son repeatedly fails to karate chop through a wooden plank with his bare hands. Thanks to the iPhone’s all-day battery life, he continues to record into the evening. The ads were created in-house by Apple, with assistance from TBWA\Media Arts Lab; they will air during the College Football Playoffs and across social media.​

Miralax: The Gut Gap by Energy BBDO

You might have heard of the gender wage gap, but have you ever heard of the gut gap? It turns out that constipation is a feminist issue. Miralax, a laxatives brand, is on a mission to expose ‘The Gut Gap’ and women’s struggle with constipation. To do so, the brand enlisted the help of the iconic comedic duo Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer of the sitcom Broad City.

The work is informed by a recent Miralax survey that found that not only are women disproportionately stressed, but they are also twice as likely to be constipated. It also revealed that nearly half of millennial women turn to laughter as a way to relieve stress. Chicago-based agency Energy BBDO led the campaign while Jacobson and Glazer co-wrote the long-form commercial, just like they did their hit show.

Motherwell FC: Why You Should Invest by the Leith Agency

Scottish Premiership club Motherwell FC has launched a campaign to attract investment to support its work both on and off the pitch. Developed by ad agency Leith, the spot takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the latest trend of American A-list celebrities buying football clubs.

The Steelmen, as they are affectionately known by fans, take viewers on an offbeat tour of the club, showing why it offers ”real bang for your buck.” As a club owned by its supporters, MFC aims to stress that it uses the power of football to create positivity beyond what happens on the pitch. So far, the ad has led to 10 notes of interest from potential investors.

H&R Block: RI Sundance Trailer by Piro

Tax prep brand H&R Block is poking fun at US consumers’ love of reality TV programming, such as Netflix’s chaotic and delicious Too Hot to Handle, in a new four-part series. The campaign, created with Piro, aims to turn sexy singles into responsible adults who know how to do laundry and file their own taxes. The trailer, which debuted Thursday at the Sundance Film Festival, shows sexy singles arriving for what they think is a summer of fun at Lit Island – only to be swindled into developing valuable life skills on what is, in actuality, Responsibility Island.

The limited content series, which will be available for streaming on Roku starting February 16, follows young, gorgeous singles as they partake in challenges that test their chore and tax-filing abilities.

Starling Bank: The Bank Built for You by Wonderhood Studios

Starling Bank is marking the beginning of an ambitious year of growth with a new brand platform created with the London-based agency Wonderhood Studios. The platform, ‘The Bank Built for You,’ launches with three 30-second spots aiming to shine a spotlight on the bank’s customers – the people behind every transaction.

The relatable shorts were directed by Lucy Forbes, known for her work on This is Going to Hurt and The End of the F***ing World. In ‘The Dessert,’ viewers see a frustrated young woman motivated to move out after witnessing her parents having a romantic moment together in the kitchen, ‘Rinsed’ features a young entrepreneur washing her parents’ car in exchange for pocket money, while ‘Night Owls’ sees a hard-working lorry on the night shift, encouraging his partner to enjoy a night out with friends.

Financial Times: Democracy 2024 by Margaret Atwood

Business publication The Financial Times has launched a four-part series titled ‘Democracy, 2024’ to examine what democracy will look like in the year ahead. In the first film, Canadian novelist and poet Margaret Atwood demonstrates how democracy can be eroded and how people can be fooled into thinking authoritarianism is a preferred option. She urges viewers to “call the bluff“ of leaders who tell us otherwise.

Three further films include Indian comedian Aditi Mittal in a sitcom-style sketch, Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak drawing on nature to illustrate the parallels between democracy and the broader ecosystem and Nigerian poet and author Lola Shoneyin reciting a poem about how coups and military dictatorships in Africa have threatened democracies over the decades. The campaign is a collaborative effort between director Juliet Riddell and several artists, including experiential art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast and musician Made Kuti. The series is available to watch online and across social media channels.

Amazon: It’s On Prime by Wieden+Kennedy

Wieden+Kennedy’s latest push for Amazon’s ‘It’s On Prime’ campaign features US rapper Post Malone, pop princess Dua Lipa and other recognizable faces. The pun-laden posters went live across New York and feature lines such as ‘From game changers to card games. It’s on Prime,’ which appears under a diptych of Malone and a deck of playing cards, and ‘From snacks to music. It’s on Prime,’ which is accompanied by photographs of Lipa and a popcorn maker.

This out-of-home push follows two ads from Jeff Bazos’s brand that launched at the top of the year and showed how customers could kick-start new interests and hobbies in 2024. The campaign is also supported by paid social and digital display.

One Club for Creativity: The One to Brag About by Not W+K

It’s a rare thing to scroll through social media these days and not encounter, in one form or another, a ‘humblebrag’: that is, a seemingly unpretentious and modest statement that’s actually celebrating – rather immodestly – one’s own qualities or achievements. Most of us reflexively roll our eyes when we come across this kind of thinly disguised egotism. But now, Not Wieden+Kennedy – the marketing agency’s London-based design studio – is embracing the humblebrag phenomenon while simultaneously capitalizing on the cultural buzz that’s been rapidly growing around AI.

The studio unveiled ’The One to Brag About,’ a campaign launched in partnership with the One Club for Creativity, the nonprofit that produces the annual One Show awards, encouraging shameless self-promotion from the award show’s winners, nominees, and everyone else. The new campaign is centered on the ‘Brag Bot,’ a GPT-4-based chatbot whose sole function is to generate humblebrags. The Brag Bot can also be accessed by anyone who’s not involved with the upcoming One Show awards.

Berghaus: Mera Peak by Glenn Kitson

To mark the re-release of its 90s Mera Peak jacket, Berghaus wanted a short film that captured the iconic jacket in all its glory. To do so, the brand approached artist, adman, filmmaker and ‘big jacket’ enthusiast Glenn Kitson.

To capture the love for the gore-text jacket, Kitson interviewed a whole range of people, from ravers to ramblers, who he knew would produce amazing soundbites for the film. The artist also features in the spot in animated form. Overlaying the audio with a mixture of colorful visuals that include both ‘real’ footage of fashionable models and then rendering them with AI has resulted in a super trippy spot.

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