Never again will you be able to complain about an unsexy client that doesn't inspire you.
The proof in the pudding: For one such El Salvador brand, Ogilvy & Mather created a moving sports "documentary" about Jorge Chávez, national champion for a most curious sport indeed.
"Ever since I was a kid, I've always had a passion for sports. It's a family tradition," Chávez begins. His father was a soccer player; his grandfather, a boxer. "I knew there was a place in sports for me."
Check out the film here:
Hold that "WTF" in!
The surprisingly developed ad features dead-serious interviews with Jorge's trainer, Josué Jovel; referee Germán Romero; and even Jorge's mother, Yanira de Chávez, who manages his rigorous training diet.
"I always tell them that every fart my son lets out makes me proud," de Chávez says as she whips out a tall jar of beans, ready to serve her champion.
Jovel explains what goes into the fictional sport of Air Farting with a precision we haven't witnessed since J.K. Rowling's explanation of Quidditch. In Air Farting, he says, athletes perform "a high jump full of flair and style, while farting at the highest point."
Four critical factors are taken to account, per referee Romero: height, style, odor and sound.
The most prevalent refute to Air Farting's acceptance in mainstream culture will be easy to relate to for anyone who's defended their fringey challenge of choice, from esports to snooker: "Anyone can fart, but not everyone can control them," says Chávez. "When you can make them longer, noisier and smellier, farts transcend sports and become an art."
"Air Farting is 80 percent in the colon, 20 percent in the mind," adds Jovel with zero irony.
But this wouldn't be a story without an arc. For Chávez and his team, drama hits right before the national championship, when—like that time in Nymphomaniac when Charlotte Gainsbourg discovers her clitoris is "broken"—the hero realizes he can't fart.
"You feel powerless," he opines.
But like any true athlete, Chávez powers on, amping up his training and refusing to pull out at the last minute. The great climax of the ad occurs in slow-mo, when he runs across the gymnasium and takes his glorious leap into farting history. Nearby, Romero delicately waves a hand, drawing the aroma to his nose with expert care.
Notably, we never hear the fart, which is a shame after so much buildup. But it probably would have broken the lovingly crafted suspension of disbelief, throwing us face-first into the wackness of the whole premise.
Still, let's be real—it's ridiculous. But it's done so well, and with such gravitas, that you can't help but admire the effort (not unlike how we felt after watching this artful and stoic treatment of a fist-fucking cottage).
Things wrap with a quiet reveal for the actual brand here: Colonfine Gotas, a natural colon regulator that—wait for it!—"gets rid of Olympic gases."
And now we're just sitting here, stunned by the triumphant weirdness of it all. This is probably also the most we've ever mentioned farting in a single article (12 times, which will make an excellent cocktail statistic)—a fact that can't but help the brand as it boldly storytells its way toward becoming the Stella Artois of colon comfort.
CREDITS
Client: Colonfine Gotas
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, San Salvador, El Salvador
Creative Directors: Joshua Rueda Mego, Patty Del Cid, Rodrigo Tablas
Art Director: Juan Joel Rivera
Copywriters: Roberto Mata, Joshua Rueda Mego
Photographer: Roberto Mancía
Additional Credits: Raúl Olivares, Traffic Films, Garage Films, Paolo Bianchi
