Great TV spots for Standard Life
I first saw a couple of weeks ago on TV a pair of advertisements for Standard Life, the first called "Beach" and the other "Crosswalk". As television ads tend to do only between many blue moons, these spots left me unexpectedly entertained and anxious to see them again. They feature a pair of easy-going insurance agents casually throwing about risk statistics in a couple of common situations only to find themselves taken off guard by a wholly-unexpected scenario at the punch line.
Conceived by Marketel (Toronto) and produced by Soft Citizen (Montréal), this campaign succeeds largely because the spots do not condescend to the viewer and are of high quality in most every respect: they are well written, well cast, well performed, well paced, and are simultaneously intellectual yet amusing to any audience.
It's especially exciting to see this type of work coming out of Canada.