Rube Goldberg should get some kind of posthumous honorary award at Cannes. The American cartoonist and inventor (who died in 1970 at age 87) has been an endless inspiration for commercials—most famously, Honda's "Cog," the 2003 spot by Wieden + Kennedy that presented a Goldberg-style machine whose interacting parts all came from a disassembled Accord. There have been plenty of other Goldberg-style ads, and now we get this amusing new one from Ogilvy & Mather Paris for Ford—starring dogs! The Web film promotes the new Ford C-Max's Active Park Assist technology, which is so easy even a dog can do it. (They haven't tried a caveman.) The ad, featuring one long seamless synchronized stunt, shows kids putting on a circus in their backyard, starring the family dog and all the neighborhood buddy dogs. The humorous and unnecessarily elaborate chain of events eventually leads back to the family pooch, who jumps in the front seat of a Ford C-Max and parallel parks it with the push of a button. No dogs were harmed during production, although Honda's spot takes a bit of a ribbing.
CREDITS
Client: Ford
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Paris
Spot: "The Dog"
Executive Creative Director: Chris Garbutt
Creatives: Adam Kennedy, Brandon Rochon
Head of Digital & Brand Entertainment: Frederic Levron
Account: Natalie Heckel, Lamia Shrebati, Xavier Delaporte
TV Producers: Antoine Bagot, Caroline Petrucelli
Production Co.: Zoo Film
Director: James Frost