President’s Choice jolts moviegoers awake

A trailer, seemingly about dreams, has a big twist.
By
January 3, 2019

pc1The latest President’s Choice campaign is quite cinematic, which is apropos as I first saw it in a dark Cineplex theatre on New Year’s Day.

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I, and those around me, got pulled into what seemed like a very fancy trailer for some half-baked sci-fi flick. There were waves and balloons and a guy (the late philosopher Alan Watts it turns out) yammering on about dreaming a dream in which you get to live out 75 years full of fantasies in one night’s sleep. The old man next me yelled out what he thought the twist was: “And then you die!”

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Then came the actual twist: “Finally you would dream.” Long, dramatic pause. “Where you are now.” The camera then pulls back to show a group of people enjoying a meal as the text reads: “Eat together”. When the PC logo then appeared on the screen it elicited literal gasps (and a few giggles) as the audience realized the movie trailer was actually a PC commercial.

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Most ads are forgotten the second after they air – kind of like that dream you can’t recall once you wake. Judging by the strong reactions of my fellow theatregoers and the number of views on YouTube (1 million and counting) I don’t think this 90-second spot will be so quickly lost to the sands of time in 2019.

Credits
Client: Loblaw Companies Limited – President’s Choice
Agency: John St.
Copywriter: Kohl Forsberg
Art director: Dorota Pankowska
Planner: Megan Towers, Colin Carroll
Producer: Monika Ghobrial
ECD: Cher Campbell
Account management: Ryan O’Hagan, Caitlin Elliot, Claudia Buckler
ACD: Kohl Forsberg