1) Go Back To What You Love – Google

I am a sucker for visual puns, and this is as Spartan as they come. The product is centre stage, and conveys an emotional bang without showing a single human being. Most people in their audience base will instinctively get it, and be reminded of it everytime they press backspace on their keyboards.

2) #HaathBadao India – Dominos

Although the ad could have been shorter, the underlying concept is spot on. The way ‘haath badao’ works on two levels is genius; the video may be blah but the line is sticky. Now all they need to do is remove the slice of life type parts and make the narrative tighter.

3) All For One – Government of Singapore

The insight of one-upmanship as it exists between life-long friends will ring true to a lot of us. ‘Who will go first’ is not a warning, it is an invitation. Granted, some of the sequences are kind of cheesy (almost as if a Pakistani agency-BM combo was involved in the approval stage) but the cultural tension point is perfect.

4) Inside Peter PSA – Family Guy

Ads and campaigns can only do so much, and I am betting that Family Guy’s clever content embed will spread more awareness than the biggest of ad budgets. What is awesome is that despite the long duration you don’t ‘tune out’ or skip the message and it counts as entertainment rather than interruption.

5) Facebook – More Together By Rizwan

I hate long, emotional tearjerker ‘ads’. This one though, really hit close to my heart because some of my loved ones are vaccine sceptics too. I loved that brand placement was subtle but unmistakable. It is definitely one of those ads that everybody in Pakistan will see and go:

“Why can’t we make advertising like India?”

Umair Kazi is Partner, Ishtehari.