"Fortune Teller"

10 April 2025

30s

Cross his palm with silver.

Simon Farnaby, who made his name in Horrible Histories and is now most famous for authoring the beloved Paddington 2, puts in a star turn as a fortune teller in this entertaining ad for the Skipton Building Society. The approach of other banks is in the spotlight, but get this... rather than creating a clichéd 'other' bank, agency Red Brick Road have used an analogy by representing other financial institutions' poor practices in the person of a dodgy fortune teller.

Director Ric Cantor enables Farnaby to do his thing, and he effortlessly lands the best lines of a script that handily makes its point about the reliability of the advertised building society. Skipton emerge out of the ad in the exactly the light intended and, just as importantly, come across as more magnanimous than banks and building societies that use their commercials to attack their competitors more directly.

UK

Building Societies