The Andy Awards shortlist - telling stories is back, in new forms.

The Andy Award Shortlist seems to have a new way of telling stories in common. Advertising was always about storytelling. Lets take a closer look at some of the shortlisted work, shall we?

A very clever use of all the media and sharing tools available to us today is the Troy library integrated campaign. It repositions the issue in the consumers voters mind, by telling a story with the same tools everyone else was using, just a lot blunter. Remember when "estate tax" name changed to be called "Death tax"? Here they changed "Tax rise" to "Book burning party" as the effect of voting no would shut down the library.
You have a very good shot of walking home with a little head, Leo Burnett Detroit, and lets face it, who doesn't want a little head? (yeah I went there.)

Save Troy Library / Book burning party - Adventures In Reverse Psychology

Another good example of changing the story by changing how things are perceived is the Pacific Standard campaign. Who knew Ice-Cube had studied architectural drafting of all things? And that he's a mad Eames fan? I did not but seeing LA from his point of view driving down Inglewood showed me gems where I thought there was only ugly, and suddenly I'm interested in Art in L.A. It's laid back conversation as sneaky sales-tool. ;)

Ice Cube celebrates Eames

Telling stories via music and animation is something we've all been familiar with since we were glued to Sesame Street as kids, so when Willie Nelson covers “The Scientist” to tell the story about ecologically sensible farming, I'm glued to the screen as if I was three years old and it was all animated in sand. (Remember those?) In the end, I have learned about Chipotle Cultivate Foundation and that this weeks magic word is "sustainable".

Chipotle - Back to the start

Classic standup always works too. When they said that the thirty second commercial would die, they forgot how much humans love to tell jokes and watch short skits. Take my wife, please.

Landrover - Pathological Liar

Even if you know the punchline from the first frame, people will enjoy a story well told, which has been Canal+'s signum for a few years now with highlights such as Wardrobe and March of the penguins.

Canal+ the Bear

In short, what the shortlist of the Andy shows me is that storytelling never dies, even if the tools we use are new an unfamiliar, making the storytelling itself seem like a new gimmick. The gimmick is simply to tell the story from an unexpected point of view, to look at it from an angle people weren't looking at it from before. Even the Samsonite poster is doing this. This "trick" is as old as advertising itself.