"Smooth Break"

5 June 2025

30s

Nutty.

The idea of representing an ecstatic response to something via the sudden appearance of a musical interlude has, surprisingly as it may seem, been done quite a few times before, so if you're going to go down that path, you'd better do it in a fashion that is both original and diverting. Fortunately this ad for Nutpods achieves both, using the priceless commodity of weirdness to land its claim that the advertised milk alternative is positively dreamy, even if it isn't creamy (in the dairy sense).

Director Arthur Studholme, ably assisted by editor Andrew Ratzlaff, manages to make all of this magic happen within 30 seconds which, despite the obvious preference of awards juries for longer executions, ought still to be the gold standard when it comes to advertising (if anything, the gold standard should veer towards shorter executions because of the diminishing attention span of the modern audience).

Not only is this attention-grabbing and engaging, it also makes a persuasive case for the deliciousness of the advertised product which, lest we forget, is what this whole game is about.

USA

Milk