"Vanilla"

8 October 2025

60s

Better than vanilla?

In this ad for Google Pixel, the brand expresses its frustration with the ovine masses for continuing to choose Apple and Samsung phones when the advertised phones are clearly superior. According to Google, that is. They feel the market leans towards the most vanilla option... using vanilla in the sense of being a bland flavour, which - as we should really all know - is a misrepresentation of vanilla, but hey ho.

Directors Matias & Mathias have given the idea legs by treating it at face value. No one likes to think of themselves as a mindless follower, and the ubiquity of the ice-cream cones representing the smartphones almost all of us have in our pockets is designed to give us pause for thought.

Good as the execution is, it's hard to see it having the desired effect. The only thing we like less than thinking of ourselves as mindless followers is being told by a self-interested third party that we are idiots, and that's pretty much what Google are doing here.

USA

Mobile Phones