German DIY home-improvement brand Hornbach adds to its long list of advertising successes with this fun twist spot from Heimat Berlin.
A man storms out of his house in a fit of rage. He's so preoccupied, he hasn't even bothered to put on pants. He checks the trash cans, and finds them empty, throwing a tantrum while his baffled wife—presumably to blame for accidentally chucking a precious item—looks on.
Still in his boxers, the guy frantically hitches a ride on a garbage truck, then a trash barge, and then he treks through the landfill to dig up his lost treasure (somehow, he's able to find out exactly where it is buried). What could inspire such passion and effort?
Cheekily titled "Spring Collection," the spot does a nice job of slow building drama around what's essentially a lone sight gag—a man in his underpants—by escalating it with each more-ridiculous scene. The copy, meanwhile, justifies the epic sequence by punching up the the fact that the guy's pants are unique to him—"designed" (read: destroyed) by his labor.
It's a fun sideways take on the familiar dig at expensive, pre-distressed brand-name jeans, and by the same token, a relatable celebration of that pair you can't quite let go, even though its seen more than a few too many days of wear. More pointedly, it's a pretty effective way to show that, by the time you get done with your home improvement projects, your pants are going to look like they've been to the dump and back—a testament to your hard work.
In the end, the camera cuts back to the front yard, where the hero, wearing his beloved pants, is still wielding a shovel. That leaves it a little unclear whether the whole quest was just a metaphor for the man's DIY project itself—tearing up the grass in pursuit of the perfectly wrecked pair of jeans—or just for how far he'd be willing to go to get his already tattered pants back, because he's too proud to keep going without them.
It doesn't really matter. Either way, the wife's getting the bad end of the deal, what with the crazy husband and the giant hole in the lawn.
Agency: Heimat Berlin.