How a little girl’s foul language created an advertising hit for Norwegian agency Morgenstern and led to a Film Grand Prix at the Epica Awards.
The film “We Need To Talk About Eli” is in some ways so traditional that it’s refreshing. No AI. No special effects. No creator collabs. Just terrific acting and a very relatable payoff. You can watch it here – but to sum up, it features a small girl who spouts a stream of curse words whenever she carries out a manual task at school, much to the dismay of her teachers.
After her parents are called in for the titular chat, we discover the source of her colourful language: her dad.
Bjørnar Buxrud, copywriter and partner at Morgenstern, the Oslo-based agency behind the film, says the piece’s classic quality is no coincidence. “We’re very focused on being – I don’t want to say ‘a traditional agency’ – but on doing advertising rather than a lot of other stuff. So no PR, no content, no digital department.”
The ten-year-old indie agency, about 30-strong, does have its own production department though, so the film was crafted entirely in-house. Quite appropriate for a film about DIY, when you think about it.
The client unlocked creativity
The agency also benefited from, as Bjørnar puts it, “a client who actually had the balls to buy this idea”. That would be Trond Bentestuen, CEO of the building supplies chain Maxbo, who came on board in 2022. The sector had experienced a rocky couple of years, first due to Covid, then the war in Ukraine, inflation, and the rising cost of materials. As Maxbo gets most of its income from professional builders, its business had taken a big hit.
By the time Bentestuen arrived, Morgenstern had already been working for Maxbo under difficult these conditions. “They’d cut the budget down to a bare minimum, so we were mostly doing price-related campaigns, not any real brand marketing. But when Trond became CEO, there was a total gear shift. He has a very keen eye for marketing and recognises its role.”
He also wanted to make advertising that people would notice, hence his decision to back a film about a little girl who swears like a truck driver. “Trond is very much a guy who recognises that indifference is the death of a lot of advertising.”
Curses lost in translation
Bjørnar’s colleague on the project, copywriter and partner Torkild Jarnholt, confirms that the film’s central idea arose from personal experiences – there was no need for focus groups. “We’re both parents and we’re both people who swear a lot,” he jokes. “The fear of your children picking it up from you is something every parent can relate to.”
They didn’t make a version with the swearing blipped out – it would have been too tempting to air it. Torkild points out that the Norwegian curses are funny in themselves. “A lot of the humour comes from the fact that the father says something quite specific and the girl repeats it. The curses are a little bit made up, but said in a very aggressive way. One word is like ‘testicle nail’, which is kind of hard to translate.”
The film was passed by the advertising regulator and attracted only one virulent complaint – to the wrong TV channel, a state broadcaster that doesn’t carry any advertising.
The other universal truth of the film is that many of us would like to be better at home improvements. Our grandfathers and even fathers may have been good with their hands, but we seem to have lost the knack.
Bjørnar says: “My wife likes to tell a story about how, when we moved into our house, I was fiddling around with a bookshelf and trying to put it together for quite some time. And it ended up with me dragging the whole bastard out on the veranda and throwing it down on the floor.”
We’re both parents and we’re both people who swear a lot
The casting component
The film wouldn’t have worked without its amazing cast, particularly the little girl who plays Eli. The casting call attracted actors from all over, including the UK, but finally the role went to a Norwegian. “I’ve been in this business for 25 years and I’ve never worked with a more talented child,” says Bjørnar. “She’d already been in musicals: she was in a version of Frozen playing the young Elsa.”
He adds that once they had the script, they were aware that “if we were going to do this thing right, it needed great actors”. They even convinced the client to raise the budget for acting talent. “All the grown-ups in this film are theatre actors who usually don’t do commercials. So while the attraction was partly the fee, it was also the script, which they loved. ‘I’d be proud to be in this film’, they told us.”
It’s fine to admit defeat
The film wraps up nicely with the father’s admission that he could use some help. Something that many of us – particularly men, Bjørnar observes – are absurdly afraid of acknowledging.
“We needed to make it okay to walk into the store and say, ‘Look, I’m trying to put this floor down and I need some advice.’ That’s a huge part of the client’s positioning. They’re the second largest retailer in this market and can’t compete on price with the biggest one, who are totally low cost. But what they’re better at is the knowledge and level of service of the people who work there.”
Coincidentally, the ad shares the Film Grand Prix with Hornbach, another home improvements brand. Bjørnar and Torkild admit to being fans. Torkild says: “They’ve done so many great things that are all very different, but always with the firm base of an insight.”
Now, though, they may have a bit of competition. Torkild says: “We’ve set ourselves a great bar, so we’ll try to stand on it and jump even higher.”
