Three Olives Vodka – Cowboys, from M&C Saatchi LA
Three Olive Vodka has produced a series of animated spots that deserve high recognition for advertising, and for their use of animation.
The concept is brilliant. Three Olives. Drinks. Three Characters walk into a bar. How wonderfully simple and clever.
Each spot features a different group of three as they enter the bar and a mini-story unfolds to play out the familiar joke situations.
The entire “Three walk into a bar” series can also be congratulated for being perfect examples of how tv commercials can operate as 30 second short movies. Each tells a different story, and yet all of them highlight the product very well….something that occasionally gets lost when doing humorous story plots.
“Three Sugar Daddies” gets points for somehow pulling this off while staging the majority of the action off camera!
My favorite is “Three Cowboys walk into a bar.” I was impressed by how entertaining the spot was – but additionally, I admired the risk. Not every alcoholic beverage company would feature gunslingers, let alone one that shoots his pals at the end to take their drinks. It was handled with great humor and style, but you can easily ask yourself this: how many other corporations would have actually produced this concept? I would say many would laugh about it around the table… and then shelve the idea before it got anywhere close to a greenlight.
It also underscores the power of animation. I could see this concept working very differently in live action vs. how innocent, fun and smooth everything takes place in this animated world of the Three Olives bar.
Written by: Elias Dancey | Contact
Elias is an award winning filmmaker and animator from Richmond, VA specializing in cartoons and motion graphics for web and broadcast. He is a Managing Partner at Eastwood Media. If you need some help with Animation or Motion Graphics you can always find him on Twitter.
nice job, very clever, E