Getting to an idea worth fighting for rarely begins from an obvious starting point. Inspired by former Wieden+Kennedy Creative Director Jason Bagley, this series uses provocative questions to mine the Big Ideas That Work Engines for repeatable creative tactics that can help answer them.
This time, we’re asking:
What would a Hollywood director do with this brief?
Here are six campaigns that probably weren’t thought of by asking this question and a few others, but they could have been...
- Invent an Extraordinary Protagonist
- Make the Benefit a Cinematic Force
- Build Towards a Transformative Twist
- Give the Hidden Victim the Leading Role
- Turn the Emotional Payoff Into a Set Piece
- Give the Everyday Blockbuster Treatment
1. Invent an Extraordinary Protagonist
Create a character who embodies the brand claim so completely that the claim becomes a story.
The Bear — Canal+, BETC, 2011
Canal+ could have told audiences how passionately it cared about cinema. Instead, it invented a bearskin rug that had spent years lying in front of the television watching films. Having absorbed more cinema than almost anyone alive, the bear becomes a passionate, exacting and spectacularly temperamental film director.
The character turns the brand’s expertise into entertainment. His backstory proves the claim: nobody understands filmmaking better than the creature that has watched practically all of it. The brand did not merely advertise great cinema. It created a protagonist worthy of it.
The question that could have produced it:
What character would represent an impossible level of passion for what we do?
2. Make the Benefit a Cinematic Force
Do not merely place the product inside a film genre. Let its benefit behave like the supernatural force driving the plot.
Join the Flip Side — Samsung, Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, 2023
Burger King promoted its Ghost Pepper Whopper through the complete grammar of a horror film: an ominous telephone call, an isolated protagonist, mounting dread and the gradual approach of an unseen threat.
The product’s heat gave Burger King permission to behave like a horror director. But the campaign did more than dress the advert in spooky imagery. It used suspense to build desire. What initially appears to be a warning about something dangerous becomes the irresistible call of the burger itself.
The genre carried the product story because fear, danger and temptation were already contained inside the name.
The question that could have produced it:
If a horror director were selling this burger, what would they make people afraid of?
The creative move: Spoof the Format
3. Build Towards a Transformative Twist
Construct the story so its ending forces the audience to reconsider everything that came before it.
The World’s Biggest Asshole — Donate Life, The Martin Agency, 2016
Coleman F. Sweeney is introduced as an almost impressively awful human being. He steals sweets from children, fires paintballs at dogs, abuses hospitality and makes life worse for practically everyone unfortunate enough to encounter him.
Then he dies.
Only afterwards do we discover that Coleman was an organ donor—and that his organs saved several lives. The reversal does not suddenly make him a good person. That is precisely the point. Donate Life replaced the familiar saintly donor with an extreme antihero to make registration feel accessible even to people unmoved by moral appeals.
Like the best film twists, the ending changes the audience’s judgement without undoing the character who produced it.
The question that could have produced it:
What final revelation would force people to reassess our protagonist—and themselves?
The creative move: Self-Reflection
4. Give the Hidden Victim the Leading Role
Find the person—or creature—normally kept outside the frame and build the entire story around their experience.
Save Ralph — Humane Society International, Arch Model Studio, 2021
Animal testing was transformed into a stop-motion mockumentary about Ralph, a laboratory rabbit who describes his injuries as an unremarkable part of his job. He is polite, weary and strangely accepting of what happens to him because humans want safe cosmetics.
The film does not explain the system from the outside. It lets someone trapped inside it provide the tour. Ralph’s calmness makes the cruelty more disturbing: he rarely accuses the audience, leaving viewers to recognise their own relationship with his suffering.
A broad ethical issue becomes one tragic character whose face, voice and personality are difficult to forget.
The question that could have produced it:
If the invisible victim became the central character, what story would they tell us?
The creative move: Self-Reflection
5. Turn the Emotional Payoff Into a Set Piece
Identify how the product makes people feel, then exaggerate that emotion into a gloriously cinematic spectacle.
Epic Action Man — MoneySuperMarket, Mother, 2018
Saving money on insurance is useful, but not inherently dramatic. MoneySuperMarket transformed that modest financial satisfaction into the kind of euphoric release usually reserved for the end of a blockbuster.
After saving money on his tank insurance, Action Man feels so spectacularly epic that he abandons military discipline and launches into an extravagant dance routine. The contrast does much of the work: one of Britain’s most rigidly masculine action heroes responds to a sensible financial decision with uninhibited physical joy.
The performance does not exaggerate how much money was saved. It exaggerates how saving money can make you feel. A mundane transaction becomes a moment of personal triumph and the emotional benefit becomes the film’s biggest set piece.
The question that could have produced it:
What if we dramatised the emotional reward of saving money as though it were a Hollywood triumph?
The creative move: Powerful Hero
6. Give the Everyday Blockbuster Treatment
Borrow the scale, drama and visual language of Hollywood to make an ordinary product or service feel spectacular.
Epic Bus — Midttrafik, Midttrafik Kommunikation, Thomas Falkenberg and M2Film, 2012
Bus travel is usually advertised through practical benefits: affordability, convenience, reliability and reduced environmental impact. Midttrafik took a rather less sensible approach. It treated an ordinary Danish bus as though it were the star of the year’s most anticipated action film.
The driver is introduced with movie-star charisma. The vehicle advances in heroic slow motion. Passengers gaze at it with breathless excitement, while everyday features—including comfortable seats, large windows and dedicated bus lanes—receive the reverence normally reserved for a luxury car launch.
The joke depends on recognising the enormous distance between the cinematic treatment and the humble subject. Yet the grandeur also changes how the service feels. By giving the bus more status than anyone reasonably expected, Midttrafik made an overlooked form of transport appear strangely desirable.
The question that could have produced it:
What if Hollywood advertised this everyday service as though it were the most exciting vehicle ever made?
The creative move: Spoof the Format
Direct the brief, don’t just answer it
“What would a Hollywood director do with this brief?” is not an invitation to make every advert longer, louder or more expensive. It is an invitation to search for the story hiding inside the strategy.
Find the character who embodies the proposition. Choose a genre that makes the benefit felt. Give the neglected perspective the leading role. Build towards a revelation, or elevate an everyday moment until it feels spectacular.
A conventional response asks how to communicate the message clearly. A director asks a more useful question:
What would make people want to stay until the end?
