Top Campaigns: the 50 best brand adverts of 2021 | Analysis & Features – The Grocer

Bagged SnacksWalkers

Are you the victim of a potentially life-changing workplace injury? No worries. So long as you have a pack of Walkers crisps and a phone to hand.

After slipping from a rooftop and smashing through a glass roof light, an aerial fitter played by comic actor Asim Chaudhry finds himself wedged. But he sees the funny side after a mouthful of salt and vinegar crisps taking selfies, texting friends and jiving to Dancing for the Judges on his phone.

Its a humorous sequence to illustrate a deft twist on the idiom when life gives you lemons. Or in the case of Walkers, when life gives you potatoes, make crisps.

Walkers now finds itself in a tight spot of its own. After many weeks of stock shortages, the brand released ads for humble pie crisps the flavour we never wanted to taste.

Young people are so lazy these days. Nope. Theyre studying for exams, playing sports, doing dance classes, the lot. The teen girl in John Wests ad this year is especially determined, from the first bus in the morning to football practice long after dark.

Enter John Wests easy-to-prepare, ambient on-the-go pasta salads. Eat strong, go strong reads the tagline, marking a bold overhaul for the canned fish supplier as it seeks to reposition itself as a health and nutrition brand.

A lot of things can arguably look like a pint of Guinness. But when youre yearning to go back to the pub, everything does: a white cat on a composter, snow on a bin, seagulls on a chimney, a bollard. A montage of stout pint-a-likes set to a cover of Elvis hit You Were Always On My Mind closes with the real thing being placed on a bar.

Aired to mark the reopening of bars in May this year, the spot ends with a group of friends enjoying a pub get-together, at long last.

Theres not much natural about pumping fragrance into your living room.

But Airwicks ad is blossoming with flowers and fluttering butterflies, set to the ASMR sounds of babbling brooks, birdsong and deep breathing. The words relaxed, balanced and happy come into focus on screen and fade away.

It serves as a flash meditation video, linking the brand to a sense of calm rather than a product to counter smelly dogs and bin stinks.

Voltarols grandad aint no cardigans and Werthers Originals kind of pops. He used to race motorbikes. And after a quick rub of the joint pain relief, hes down in the garage scrubbing up his old bike.

His grandaughter thinks hes super cool when he turns up on his glistening motor and plonks her in the sidecar. Its not just movement, its riding with the best goes the tagline.

A clever approach: its not about the product itself, but what it enables you to do.

The cinematography in Lurpaks Where there are cooks campaign turns a potentially plain ad into a work of art.

With clever use of light, everyday scenes like a flatmate making pancakes for his hungover friend, or a wife making soup for her sick husband become Caravaggio-like moving paintings. Choirs in the background and phrases like a cook can heal the sick, feed the masses somehow turn a simple butter ad into a near-religious experience.

Its a biscuitor cake? The question thats as old as time is on this occasion tackled by a bemused shop owner.

Its an existential question that prompts him to consider that if a cake can be a biscuit, maybe he can be something else too in this case, king of the roller-palace.

The store transforms into said palace, covered in disco lights and neon. The message: if a cake can be a biscuit, you can be anything. Be what you want to be.

This year, Coca-Cola launched its first new global brand platform in five years: Real Magic. The creative approach is about creating a movement to choose a more human way of doing things said Coca-Cola Company CMO Manolo Arroyo.

The first creative to use the line was an ad that showed gamers downing their virtual weapons after a slurp of Coke.

The use of well-known gamers gave it kudos among its target demographic, while hidden codes in ads unlocked prizes.

Kelloggs knows it has a hit on its hands with this ad, set to the soundtrack of evergreen hit a plane pour moi by Plastic Bertrand. So it has continued the campaign, debuted in 2020, through into 2021.

The backing tune provides an enormous amount of energy to the series of ads, which depict an office dalliance over a bowl of cornflakes and festivalgoers basking in a brief spot of sunshine with their cereal.

We Do Breakfast says the tagline. And great ads too.

Rather surprisingly, its a concept not used by a brand before: an online delivery arrives with the driver insincerely sorry that a substitution has been made. In this case: its Heinzs beans. The customer exclaims but beans meanstasty tea times

Still in her dressing gown, she powers to the corner shop, running through one neighbours kitchen and crashing through anothers garden fence, while extolling the benefits of the lean, supreme, plant-based protein cuisine.

Its an action-packed and hilarious take on a banal but increasingly familiar occasion, given a fifth of households consistently order groceries online each month, according to Kantar.

With the help of a baby in store, the woman chimes out the brands new endline: Beanz Meanz More.

Dance music plays as a small red ball bounces over crackers, cucumber slices and baguettes, transforming them into vessels for oodles of cheese and fresh veg. The healthy-looking snacks bounce with an overload of ingredients as the ball becomes the exclamation point on an mmmm before finally landing to dot the i on a pack of Boursin.

Its more catwalk show than fromage advert, positioning the brand as a trendy and seemingly healthy option. Its trs chic, and not at all cheesy.

With pub closures never more than a new variant away, many booze brands have foregone ads full of fun and socialising to focus on whats in the glass.

Thatchers, for example, has its ad featuring bubbling cider and practically nothing else. It sloshes and swirls around a glass to a thumping cinematic soundtrack and finally cuts out to the sound of a heavenly choir. The final drop leaps from the glass in slow motion in the shape of an apple. A safe bet, but it worked.

Tear-jerkers about separation from family are just so last year. But Branstons non-Covid related play on the advertising clich nevertheless yanks on the heartstrings to great effect.

A daughter is making her way in the big city. Over a montage of new job nerves and making new friends, a voicemail from her mum and dad plays, reminding her that theyre lucky to have you.

Theyve sent an only silly something a jar of Branstons. Pass the tissues.

A series of miserable-looking women depicted in black and white metamorphose into sparkling sirens in glorious technicolor with just a dab of Charlotte Tilburys Happikiss Hydrating Lipstick Balms. One is so pleased with her transformation that she soulfully sings the line happiness in a tube.

Backgrounds, borders and fonts with a 1950s-style, retro bent add more sparkle to proceedings never has the phrase hyaluronic acid looked so glamorous.

A new mum grimaces as she breastfeeds her baby at the bus stop. She tells her friend that one nipple is bad and the other well, pinching her Malteser into dust and stamping it into the ground makes things pretty clear.

As she reaches for another, her friend withdraws the pack. Not after that display! How dare she destroy the delicious chocolate-coated malted milk treat? But its all in good fun.

It is one of two TV ads the confectionery brand developed in partnership with Comic Relief which this year coincided with International Womens Day to humorously depict the everyday struggles of breastfeeding.

The brand is supporting mums mental health the ad says, with a donation to the charity. But as much good has been done simply by normalising a topic still taboo on TV.

Italian hunk Riccardo Acerbi took on the role of Captain Birds Eye in 2018, and was back on the high seas eating cold for breakfast in ads this year.

He strokes his beard, looks wistfully to the ocean the usual swarthy sailor stuff. But its the fish, not the captain, that captivates. A voiceover explains how freshness is locked in from sea to plate. The voice is of a man at a dinner party where the guests are all holding fish fillet pieces aloft on forks. Will he be Acerbis replacement?

Last year, brands leveraged the pandemic-prompted sense of all being in it together to associate themselves with the wave of community mindedness.

Unilevers skincare brand makes use of its position in phrase du jour Simple acts of kindness in its 2021 campaign. Scenes portray a woman walking her injured neighbours dog and giving free haircuts to jobseekers. The brand also worked with kindness.org to allow consumers to pledge an act of kindness on a community board.

Maybe its just the Lynx effect, but a few sprays of the stuff gives the protagonist of this ad a completely new and slightly psychedelic perspective on life.

Flowers with faces sing to him, a fire extinguisher becomes a watermelon, he enters a dogs brain, then becomes a hot dog.

As ever with Lynx ads, using the product means you end up with a beautiful woman. But this ad isnt all about that. A sunny outlook, it says, is just as important.

Actimel takes on a public health messaging tone in this campaign, which says keeping our communities resilient starts with you. Human-sized bottles are shown delivering post and working late in an office. Give our communities your best shot, the voiceover says rousingly (the shot being a mouthful of yoghurt drink).

Although not mentioned here, the brand set a target this year to donate a million Actimel bottles to our charity partners FareShare and FoodCloud.

Ive had meat and two veg every day of my life, says the farmer-looking fellow and instant star in Quorns hilarious 2021 ad campaign.

He is the first of a number of characters a muscle man, cavewoman, and talking venus fly trap that seem like theyd be the last people on earth to be convinced to swap out a portion of their beloved meat for a plant-based alternative.

But people and Audrey II can surprise you. Today, says the chap in a thick Yorkshire accent, Im having Quorn and two veg instead. Beefcakes dont eat beef growls the strongman.

The UK is one of the largest plant-based markets in the world, second in size only to the US, says Rabobank. But many Brits are still unconvinced. If meat-and-two-veg man cant sway them, no one can.

In 2019, Chicago Town underwent a major overhaul including a logo and packaging revamp and new slogan: Pizza? Yeah, we go to town on it.

It backed the new look with a 5m marketing campaign, which was topped up this year with a further 2.5m injection of cash. The latest effort saw bus stop wraps and billboards across major cities featuring catchy copywriting like In crust, we trust.

But it was the brands continued use of the Frank Sinatra ode to Chicago, My Kind Of Town, in TV ads that sealed its place in the zeitgeist this year. Whatever royalties its paying to Ol Blue Eyes estate, the tune is such a gift to the brand that its worth every penny.

The brand saw sales surge this year by the second-highest amount of all pizza category players, according to Kantar.

Magnums campaign is set in a steampunk factory where tubs are created by huge machines with robotic arms, rivets and dials. A thrusting saxophone provides a lusty soundtrack.

But its the final scene, in which a tub is squeezed so the chocolate top layer is satisfyingly crunched, that scoops it.

The brand also partnered with Miley Cyrus this year to present a virtual concert. By allowing viewers to take part in a lip sync challenge, it scored many shares on social media.

Is there anything not to love about this Fairy campaign? It features a crazy cute computer-generated baby surfing on a sponge scourer across dirty dishes to the tune of Bob Marleys Three Little Birds. Its so bubbly and blissful that the baby even cracks a Buddha pose as it glides across last nights grimy baking trays.

Its a brief moment of pure fun and suds. And about as far removed from the almighty chore of having to do the dishes as its possible to get.

Taylors coffee for lattes, simply called Latte, gets one drinker pondering: What if everything was this simple? A postman calls, gets proposed to and accepts. Where will we live? he asks as they walk down a beach post-wedding. There she responds as a beautiful mansion materialises.

By the end, our heroines wish to be a stingray comes to fin-flapping fruition. Its fast-paced and bonkers, and ends with the woman sipping her coffee and snapping back to reality.

This year McCain partnered with Family Fund to help provide 150,000 grants and services to families raising disabled or seriously ill children. Many of those families star in this campaign, which is all warmth and never strays into wearisome worthiness.

Its all about the little moments like time with siblings, hugs, going for walks. And eating McCain chips, of course. Its a lovely bit of CSR in keeping with McCains We Are Family slogan.

Young consumers expect brands to take a stance on social issues, according to Kantar some 46% of millennials and 42% of Gen Z.

Ben & Jerrys does just that with campaigning around issues like refugees. Controversially, this summer, the brand announced it would stop selling its ice cream in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Cue Twitter trolls in all caps screaming the brand should stick to selling ice cream. But theres little danger of that.

Opening with the bizarre scene of seven washing machines seemingly fly-tipped on a mountain top, this campaign is all about the #washcoldchallenge.

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Top Campaigns: the 50 best brand adverts of 2021 | Analysis & Features - The Grocer