Moving images: The best of British advertising

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While “interruptive advertising in someone’s social-media stream” may move product, “the process of brand building and brand loyalty and love for a brand” can “only come from the kind of advertising that is reflected in the British Arrows Awards winners,” said Simon Cooper, the Arrows board chair, before embarking to Minneapolis for the Walker Art Center’s annual Arrows Awards screening. The event (sponsored in part by the Star Tribune), runs through Jan. 4 and features 42 films (as they’re sometimes called across the pond) of varying length.

What doesn’t vary is that amid today’s cultural and commercial cacophony, they’re all moving images. Literally and figuratively, in that most evoke emotion, some startlingly so.

Like an ad for Apple that tells a story of a besieged office worker who in her off-hours creates a stop-action animation story on an iPhone. The antagonist in her tale meets ever-more-undignified fates, with viewers soon learning that the animated man is her unanimated, antagonistic boss. But after she gets glimpses into his inner life, in which he’s outside of any social circle, she flips the script — in her animated tale and, more profoundly, in her real-life collegial relationship.

The spot, which puts the cold digital device in a warm light, is titled (and creates) “Fuzzy Feelings,” and most will agree with Cooper that it’s “terribly moving” and “beautifully crafted.” Overall, he added, it reflects “emotional stories” that are “back in vogue.” And not a moment too soon, when “everyone’s talking about the demise of traditional advertising and it’s harder and harder to get people to engage.” The best method to do that, he said, remains “making good, engaging work, not by bombarding them with stuff they are trying to get past the whole time.”

Throughout the years the sharpest Arrows have been “very funny, always very peculiar” and usually “rely on performance of one kind or another,” said Cooper. More recently, however, the performance has been less acting and more action “from surprising camera moves and surprising visuals.” The temptation to accelerate this trend through transformative artificial intelligence will only grow, given the potential efficiencies. But value is intrinsic and not just transactional — and consumers notice.

Just ask Coca-Cola — “The Real Thing.” Until it isn’t, at least in a widely derided holiday ad created by “Real Magic AI” (as the commercial says in small print). Reeling from responses ranging from disappointment to disgust (after all, Coke Christmas ads advanced the modern image of a red-clad Santa Claus), the company issued a statement that the commercial was a “collaboration of human storytellers and the power of generative AI.”

There is in fact “a huge spectrum in terms of how this technology is being used,” said Paul Shambroom, an associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Art. “AI can be a valuable creative tool,” he said, adding that many of his undergraduate students “are so hungry to get their hands wet” with analog photography “and actually make something that has a physical presence.” There “has always been a power to handmade things.”

Cooper concurred: “If the aim is engagement, then AI-generated work isn’t the way.” Humans, he added, “are hardwired to recognize when something has taken effort and craft and when it hasn’t.”

Like advertising. Or more importantly to most, the TV shows it supports. Shows like “Game of Thrones,” or, in a clever commercial for French TV channel Canal+, a fictional facsimile called “The Secret of Wakany” that becomes a commercial megahit and cultural obsession for fans, who respond demonstrably when the secret (no spoilers here) is revealed. “It’s a one-line kind of idea drawn out in the most extraordinary craft and development to make it a really engaging story,” said Cooper.

Storytelling isn’t what often comes to mind amid the mindless commercialism most encounter. And even well-told stories can get well worn, reducing viewers’ receptivity. So sometimes it’s effective to reframe the message, as three PSAs (public-service announcements) on the Arrows reel do.

One is from PETA and another from Reckitt about the role clothes can play in autistic kids’ lives. The third is a searing, even stress-inducing spot called “Don’t Stop” from Greenpeace. It takes its title from a Fleetwood Mac song being played by a group of young musicians at a function attended by middle-aged and older people whose behavior spirals into oblivious, obnoxious excess. The band’s voices are drowned out by the out-of-control crowd, just as many youths aren’t heard regarding the climate crisis.

Amid the over-the-top indulgence, pots boil over, floors flood and a kitchen fire burns, symbolizing the effects of unchecked climate change as the lyrics “don’t stop thinking about tomorrow” take on a more haunting, urgent meaning. So do these stark on-screen words at the commercial’s climax: “The world is suffering some of its deadliest ever heatwaves, wildfires, floods and typhoons. Meanwhile, oil companies are enjoying record profits. It’s not too late to stop the fossil fuel party. For a better tomorrow, take action today.”

The PSA’s “ambition is extraordinary for a message that people have increasingly deaf ears for,” said Cooper. “To find a new way of representing the catastrophe we’re all living, we’re all kind of frog-marching towards — I think it did an exceptional job.”

Reframing a message, Cooper said, “makes people sit up and take notice.” You “have to surprise people; it really is that simple. You can’t keep making the same films, creating the same message and expecting the response to be different.”

Well, unless you’re making Christmas commercials for British retailer John Lewis, whose holiday spots are an anticipated feature of the season and the Arrows reel. Because within advertising and Britain itself, Cooper said, “there’s an enormous expectation” for their annual ads. “It has come to define our industry and the Christmas period, and I think it’s terribly helpful for our industry that we’ve managed to hang onto something that still maintains sort of the water-cooler aspect to it.”

This year is no different, with a sweet story about a boy who buys a flea-market “Fast-Growing Christmas Tree” box whose seed doesn’t grow a Fraser fir but a Venus flytrap. As veteran viewers of the Arrows know, John Lewis commercials — especially the endings — endure, with the ad’s admonition to “Let Your Traditions Grow” applying not just to consumers but the retailer’s reputation itself.

And, by extension, the Walker’s, which has grown the Arrows Awards into a holiday tradition in its own right. Indeed, with this event and others throughout the year, the arts institution seems to be heeding the ethos espoused at the end of the Canal+ ad: “Don’t Trust Your Imagination to Just Anybody.”