I was just musing over how incredibly annoying ads are these days… and then Heineken’s ‘The Date’ concept burst onto the scene. (Well, OK… ‘my awareness’. It’s been on ‘the scene’ for a good while already).

It’s AWESOME.

It takes some kind of bollywood-meets-bond, meets circus, meets date-movie memeplex and manages to create something immersive and engaging from it all. The joins between the borrowed ideas are seamless, and the cross-cultural slant is just a breath of fresh air. The two characters at the center of the action move the world’s tiniest story forward, from one moment to the next, and the miniature plot unfolds within the tight temporal constraints yet nothing feels squeezed at all (in fact, the shorter edits of the ad work even better). So we accept this gorgeous epic, compactified as it is in every possible dimension and yet remaining as engaging as any well-made marathon flick… Continue reading →