Clever Creative: A Love Tail Gone Overboard

The origins and stories surrounding mermaids are sometimes good, but mostly bad. In them, sailors often feared that a mermaid would use her beauty and songs to make them fall overboard where she could drag them down to the bottom of the ocean. In today’s “Clever Creative,” this common myth is used for a public service announcement to all those on the open waters.

This ad with a twist was created by French agencies, Publicis Conseil and Wizz, and was made for the French Maritime Rescue Organization. The organization mentions on their website that in 2015, they had 3,552 rescue missions where 6,132 people at sea were saved. The mission of this ad is to show the importance of wearing a life jacket, because if you don’t, you could potentially be dragged down to the ocean floor and become a part of a mermaid’s delusions, never to surface again. Although the sailor may have gone overboard, the creative certainly did not.

Why our GEMites liked this Clever Creative:

This animated ad, reminiscent of a Chipotle ad from earlier this year, takes a seemingly simple concept (wearing a life jacket on a boat) and turns it into one of the greatest PSA’s we’ve seen. When you start watching, your first question is, “What could this ad be for?” But then, just like the sailor himself, you get dragged into the storyline of the ad and forget that it’s actually promoting something. We love when an organization is able to captivate their audience with a good story, and this ad does just that.

Another reason why our GEMites like this ad is because of the unexpected twist of being a PSA for life jacket use. Although it may not be the glamorous ending or product you were hoping for, it ends up being a great ad with a creative ending.

Why our fellow creatives should like this:

Over the past few months, we’ve seen more and more agencies embracing animation, both 2-D and 3-D, in their ads. The French Maritime Rescue Organization and their accompanying agencies also took this route and created a memorable ad. We think the creatives’ choice to use animation is a novel idea, and style, for a PSA. As we’ve mentioned before, PSA’s aren’t usually the most interesting subject matter, but this organization and agency found a way to make it so. We think our fellow creative should like this ad because of their unconventional utilization of animation for a PSA. But that’s not all.

We believe that their ability to captivate their audiences with their storytelling and then the surprise reveal of the message at the end should be another reason to love this ad. In today’s society, when the attention spans of consumers are short, it’s quite a feat to be able to keep them interested for a minute and thirty-two seconds. Because of this engagement, there’s a higher chance that people absorbed their message; more than if the organization took the traditional approach to a PSA.

Usually, it’s bad news if an ad goes overboard, but in the case of this PSA for the French Maritime Rescue Organization, it was a success.

Let us know what you think, and look out for next week’s installment of Clever Creatives!

If you’re looking for some clever creative of your own, feel free to contact us.

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• Creativity
• Art
• Clever Creative
• Advertising
• French Maritime Rescue Organization