maggie+media

I like this ad made by TBWA for Michelin, although at first I was a little torn.

On the one hand, it’s a cute concept that actually does serve a purpose related to the product’s efficacy (more unusual than you might think!). And aesthetically it’s interesting—much more so than most car commercials. I am so over watching slow-motion computer animations of water being channeled away by tire treads.

On the other, my first reaction—and what prompted me to blog about it—to it was: “wow, they’re really ripping off all the buzz around Alice in Wonderland.”  Look at the trees in the ad, then this movie poster:

And the ad bunny’s bulging eyes…

…that are disproportionate to his body? (As well as the disproportionately small car?)

Plus, the Matrix-inspired camera action calls to mind the visual effects that anyone who’s seen a trailer or commercial for Tim Burton’s movie will recognize.

Interesting, no? When I dug a little deeper, I saw that the first commercial from this campaign appeared earlier in 2009, and time-wise I’m not entirely sure how it relates to the unveiling of the “Alice in Wonderland” images/leaks. But it seems implausible that it’s ripping as straight from Tim Burton’s mind as I imagined (although I’d argue the campaign’s aesthetic owes something—or a lot of things—to Tim Burton’s oeuvre).

Regardless of the creative overlap I like this commercial and ad campaign. It recognizes that not all people who buy tires are men who are all “beer, rotary blades, football.” So, even though the reason this ad caught my ad because it was so artistically unoriginal, in the end I like it because, for what it’s advertising, it’s original and smart.