Errol Morris' AIG ad was ahead of its time

I just stumbled across this AIG commercial by visionary director Errol Morris. I have no idea when (or if) it ran, although one YouTube commenter mentions working on the campaign about six years ago. What’s incredible is that, thanks to AIG’s spectacular collapse due to overly risky practices, this video now comes across as a defensive screed along the lines of Jack Nicholson’s  “We follow orders or people die” monologue in A Few Good Men. “If nobody takes chances, if nobody pushes the boundaries … nothing great happens,” the voice-over declares. “Bold achievements call for bold acts.” And apparently, bold acts sometimes go on to call for bold bailouts.

—Posted by David Griner

Published on July 6, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under AIG, Errol Morris, Griner

Errol Morris plugging his-and-hers Depends

Errol Morris fires up his famed Interrotron interviewing machine (which he used for the Apple "Switchers" campaign and some pro-Obama election ads, among other efforts) for these JWT ads promoting the new gender-specific Depend adult undergarments. The technique is usually effective, but here the questions posed, designed to highlight the differences between men and women (e.g., "Who are better drivers?"), are so shopworn that the spots end up feeling tiresome. The marketing campaign is supposedly the largest in the history of the Kimberly-Clark brand, and Morris's involvement speaks to the emphasis on presenting Depend users as plainspoken, everyday folks. Unfortunately, there's no Ellen Feiss character to liven things up.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Published on April 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (3)
Filed under Depend, Errol Morris, JWT, Kimberly-Clark, Nudd, Personal care