What do you do when competitor, VW, has claimed ownership of driver assistance features with several years of striking ads that show VW’s slick performance? And almost every other brand is trying to make its safety features essential with the threat of disaster scenarios?

You can try a new tack entirely – emphasising that other drivers are the real threat. And you can use humour. Apart from Grabarz & Partner’s laughing horse ad for VW park assist no one else has thought of that. BBH London has made the other drivers the clowns on the road – literally.

That doesn’t mean its ad for Audi UK is perfect. Its hyperbole – enhanced by a soulful version of Sondheim’s (or as you and I know it, Frank Sinatra’s) Send In the Clowns, by Faultline and Lisa Hannigan – walks a tightrope between being dismissed as inauthentic and being the foundation of a brilliant metaphor. Not always steadily.

The 90-second spot was directed by Ringan Ledwidge, who also directed Audi’s Duel ad last year.

The end line is fabulous. Clown Proof does clinch the deal.

Credits:
Agency: BBH London
Creative Team: Doug Fridlund (copywriter), Mikael Alcock (art director)
Executive Creative Director: Ian Heartfield

Strategist: Ed Kurland
Strategy Director: Damien Le Castrec
Business Lead: Polly McMorrow
Account Manager: Zara Scriven
Account Director: François-Xavier Hafner
Producer: David Lynch
Assistant Producer: Charlie Hurlock
Production Company: Rattling Stick
Director: Ringan Ledwidge
Executive Producer: Katie Keith
Producers: Tim Nunn & Sally Humphries
DoP: Adam Arkapaw
Post Production: The Mill
Editing: Rich Orrick  @ Work Editorial
Sound: String and Tins

Head of Music & Music Supervisor: Ayla Owen
Music Supervisor: Julz Baldwin
Record Producer: David Kosten