The film opens on a close-up of a gorilla, engrossed in the opening bars of ‘In the Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins. The gorilla’s expression suggests that he’s been waiting for this moment all his life. The large ape flexes the muscles in his neck like a heavyweight boxer before a big fight. He’s sitting in front of a massive battery of drums and knows that the best drum fill in the history of rock is coming. When the sequence begins the gorilla starts smashing his drums with phenomenal power and precision, feeling every beat. The camera pulls back and cuts away from the gorilla and his drums; leaving them united, the way they are meant to be.

The film is introduced by ‘A Glass and a Half Full Production’ and ends with a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk packshot and the promise of ‘a glass and a half full of joy’ (thus reminding viewers of the product’s traditional claim of a glass and a half of milk in every bar of Dairy Milk chocolate).

The ‘Gorilla’ commercial has proved phenomenally popular in the UK with almost half a million YouTube viewings during the first week of its release (Metro.uk 10.09.07).

The film is the creation of Juan Cabral, Fallon’s star Argentinian creative director who’s past credits include the Sony ‘Balls’ and ‘Paint’ commercials, as well as the Tate Britain print campaign (all past Epica winners). The ‘Gorilla’ commercial marks his debut as a film director.

France 24 is a new international news channel that seeks to provide a French perspective on world events in competition with the main Anglo-Saxon networks like CNN and BBC World.

The press ads for the TV station show that France 24 goes ‘Beyond the News’ to reveal the machinery influencing every important international event.

The press campaign visualises this with different images replacing the cogs on interlocking wheels and sprockets of various sizes, each turning the other within a closed circuit that resembles the inside of an engine. For example, ‘Finance’ visualizes the interlocking relationship between the Pentagon, the Twin Towers, George Bush, Sadam, war planes, tanks, soldiers, bullets, oil pumps, barrels of oil, money, petrol pumps and voting booths etc. The two other ads in the series address topics like ‘Ecology’ and ‘Health Care’ in a similar manner.

The ‘Dare for More’ campaign consists of three posters each illustrating sporting activities under extreme conditions; mountain climbing, surfing and snowboarding. In each ad the solitary sportsman is dwarfed by nature to the point of being barely visible at first glance as he ‘dares for more’.

The basic layout of each poster reflects the style and colour scheme of the Pepsi logo: a band of red on the top ( sky or mountain range ) and a band of dark blue on the bottom (sea, cliff face or valley ), with a strong white curve separating these two colours (snow, clouds or ocean spray).

This choice of layout and colours provides strong branding, even from a distance, to the point that the posters are easily recognisable as Pepsi ads even without a pack shot or brand name; just the phrase ‘dare for more’. Additional branding comes from Pepsi’s round red, white and blue logo replacing the letter ‘o’ in the word ‘more’.

Two gorgeous and crazy girls, the Heidies, stole the new Diesel Intimate underwear collection and kidnapped the salesman. They locked themselves and the salesman in a hotel room for five days and nights while six video cameras showed the world what they were doing 24 hours a day.

This ironic, but sexy, parody of popular TV and online trends like the Big Brother reality show, MySpace and YouTube phenomena was revisited in a very Diesel way (humorous, original, provoking). The event was live, online from January 22nd to 26th, 2007.

During the whole lock-in period, visitors to the Diesel website could chat live with the girls and influence what happened inside the hotel room.

Juan, the kidnap victim, was initially tied up and given a painful waxing, but he soon started to enjoy ‘captivity’, apart from persistent phone calls from his jealous girlfriend. The trio received a steady stream of messages and suggestions from viewers via email. These were displayed on a large TV screen inside the hotel room. Viewer suggestions ranged from the playful request that the girls wear oversize panda masks to a more sophisticated online poll on the ultimate celebrity pet, which resulted in a chihuahua arriving in the room. On the last day of the ‘hostage crisis’ Diesel finally agreed to meet the Heidies’ demand that a real fashion photographer join them in the hotel room; the results can be seen on the Diesel website.

The campaign tripled traffic on the Diesel site and resulted in one of the top ten most viewed clips on YouTube from day 2. With a media budget of zero, the Heidie girls earned their 15MB of fame.