I've noticed recently that advertising firms have been turning to video games for inspiration, and making some great commercials in the process. I have compliled the five best commercials below, along with two honorable mentions. And if I forgot any great examples, please leave a comment with a link so I can update the post.
5) Kirin Lemon World This is a Japanese (home of Nintendo) commercial, and it does a great job of integrating their product into the world of Nintendo. Nothing special or creative here, but it's well executed, and I assume it went over well in a country where most people must be familiar with Nintendo.
4) Roddick Pong You might have seen this on TV, as it has been in heavy rotation and getting lots of airtime. Although it's well done (anyone who can pay Roddick as a spokesperson can clearly hire a nice special effects department, but it isn't that creative. It just takes the rules of Pong and transports them into the tennis court. As you will see with the commercials below, the best ads are those where video games are reimagined for the commercial.
3) Super Mario McDonalds The first thing that you might notice about this commercial is the hokey faux-low budget style to it. But that makes this commercial great is that I believe it was an homage to this extremely well done Gordon College Talent Show performance that made the rounds a while ago. Obviously millions of people who saw the McDonalds commercial didn't realize the connection, but I think it's great that some ad firm (apparently) saw that previous performance and decided to make a commercial out of it.
2) Tetris Honda Jazz Spot As I mentioned previously, a commercial inspired by video games really gets cool when it reimagines how the game should be used. And in this commercial (which is German by the way), the creators reimagine how Tetris can sell their product:
1) Coca Cola Grand Theft Auto This commercial is done in the classic animation style of Grand Theft Auto, although it, of course, has a much nicer message. Not only that, but it makes no mention of video games in the commercial itself, and I can't believe that all adults know GTA looks like. And the commercial works for people who don't know video games, but it still has a special secret resonance for people familiar with the game:
Honorable Mentions 1. I wanted to include these two commercials because they look very similar to a cult favorite video game (Katamari Damacy), although there is a good chance they weren't actually inspired by the video game. Katamari certainly didn't invent the rolling person snowball. [To quote South Park: "The Simpsons did it!"] But regardless of origin, these two commercials will certainly remember players of Katamari of the game:
2) The Coming Machinima Commercials Machinima is a way to make videos using multiplayer video and computer games like Halo or WoW. See the Wikipedia entry for more. And although I didn't find any actual commercials made with machinima, I did find a spoof of an actual commercial, so I figured that's the next best thing.
First, here is the beautifully done, visually and aurally stunning Sony Bravia Commercial, followed by the machinima spoof: Real
