"No Thought Left Behind"

9 February 2022

3 mins 49s

The little idea that could.

This mini epic directed by Nick Ball opens with a young woman participating in a large Zoom meeting whilst sat in a café. Eager to contribute, she has an idea and excitedly scribbles it down on a piece of paper. When the group is asked by the senior figure running the meeting whether they have any other ideas, the young woman tries to speak up but – before she can get started – she's interrupted by a bevy of other voices, largely male, who are just as eager to have their say.

Disillusioned, she scrunches up the piece of paper and leaves it on the café table before hurriedly leaving.

What follows is a beautifully put-together allegory. No matter how much distance the young woman puts between herself and her idea, it won't allow her to discard it, and the ball of paper is moved hither and thither across the city in a determined effort to catch up with her.

Nick Ball and his team deserve a lot of credit for the way they depict this journey. They clearly wanted to make it look as unmagical as possible – in order for it to come across almost as happenstance that it should turn up in the room to encourage her to speak up, at exactly the right moment.

The understatement creates a real sense of peril too... it would have been easy to take a tongue-in-cheek approach because it is, obviously, a ridiculous notion. But there must have been a recognition that any flippancy would detract from the serious point being made about junior women struggling to be heard in the workplace. And by taking itself seriously, this ad makes that point very well indeed.

USA

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