I must say that if "physicist David Neevel" (who also appears to be Wieden + Kennedy creative David Neevel—yes, all right, he says he's a copywriter in the video) really did design this Oreo-dividing and -decreming machine in .04 years, he is perhaps wasting a certain amount of potential. Like, Large Hadron Collider-level potential.
Neevel is very funny in this ad, answering (badly) exactly the kinds of questions people off camera ask reality-TV performers ("One of the hardest things to overcome was to learn how to build robots and make them work," he says at one point) and generally looking worried most of the time. Is it me, or are we as a nation sick of dumb questions this week? Everybody's favorite video was Jennifer Lawrence describing her pre-Oscars "process" as "I just woke up and tried on a dress, and it fit, thank God, and then, um, I took a shower?"
The Rube Goldberg-y machine here is pretty cool, although it's odd that Neevel didn't use, I dunno, a light switch to make it work rather than the weird, homemade toggle thing. But then, this doesn't seem to be a guy who does things the easy way, does it?
My only issue with W+K's new cookies vs. creme campaign, besides Oreo's recalcitrance over the correct spelling of the word "cream" (seriously, give it an accent grave and tell people it's pronounced "crem," or just trademark the dumb thing), is that it causes the viewer to ask the TV set why the cookie lovers don't simply migrate to Nabisco's Chocolate Teddy Grahams, and why the creme lovers don't sit alone in their darkened apartments sobbing quietly into tubs of Betty Crocker Rich & Creamy Vanilla Frosting (16 oz.), which I have never, ever done and anyone who says different is a liar, Mom.
The dramatic music in the background is exactly right for the kind of thing this is kind of parodying—Syfy shows like Robot Wars, for example. And I really dig the ASCII/dot-matrix intro, although in about six months that's going to restrict the viewership of this ad to people over 30, since most of the digital generation thinks about dot matrix and ASCII the way we over-30s think about gramophones and typewriters.
Three more videos in this series are forthcoming—on Feb. 28, March 4 and March 7.
All right, this ad has successfully made me feel old. In conclusion, ZOMG, ROFL, this ad is swag (<— am I using this right? I never know). Kthxbai.
CREDITS
Client: Mondelēz International
Product: Oreo
Creative Agency: Wieden + Kennedy
Digital Agency: 360i