Oneplus - "Just Kidding" / A days power in half an hour (2017)

After getting famously nude model and actress Emily Ratajkowski to explain how the Dash charge works, OnePlus are now launching the actual commercials that will show you why you need this fast charging tech. Their advertising avenue of choice is... using humor. This is a good idea, as iPhone is still the scaled back campaign voice where every image or sound is just so. Meanwhile Pixel is the social brand, owning the every growing "ask Google" square shape that grows in each commercial showing the thousands of things you might do with your phone. Motorola is trying to make a comeback showing eleventybillion parts of a phone as a individual fashion statement in ads so stylish you'd think they were for teenage perfume. In a way I guess they are? Why we haven't really seen dry humor among phone brands since Samsung kicked iPhones ass in the super bowl, mocking the cultish way fanboys would queue up for days. So wisely, OnePlus has chosen to zig when others zag.

A woman is staring at something, and when it's revealed to us we see to children on leashes causing havoc. One of the kids grabs an iced coffee with a devious smile, and it's at that moment our heroine comments: "Welp, I'm charged" and she dances off screen and out of this situation instead of... Warning the mom about the giant coffee heading her way.

I get it. It's meant to be funny, but somewhere along the line it has failed spectacularly and there's nothing funny about it. Humor is subjective of course, but the ones most amused by this ad seem to be the acting kids when they get to throw that coffee, as even the Mom can't hide her smile. It's not an old spice or Emerald Nuts weird humor, not is it flatulent horse cheap humor. Here I think the failure lies in the edit, the directing, perhaps the idea is too close to reality.... or maybe it's all of the above. What's great is the line; A day's power in half an hour. Why it sounds like an old-school line, like "You can't top the copper top" or "Timex: it takes a licking and keeps on ticking", and communicates the one thing this phone has that no other phone has. It's a shame the rest of the ad isn't up the the standard of that line.

Client: Oneplus

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kidsleepy's picture

There is a lot of places they could have gone with this campaign idea and that end line. Unfortunately they went into Outpost.com gerbil territory. The 90's really are back, aren't they.