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My Favourite Adam Berg Commercials

This is another in the ACES series of featuring commercial film directors that I admire for their dedicated craftsmanship in bringing creative concepts and storylines to filmic life that enthral viewers, and motivate well-earned accolades from the Advertising Communications industry.

Adam Berg

After graduating from the Stockholm Film School, Adam Berg directed music videos for the Swedish pop band ‘Kent’.
His noteworthy filmmaking skills were soon noticed, and so too were his writing and directional skills, when his short film ‘IN’ won the 2011 Best Short Film Award at the Gothenburg Film Festival.

It wasn’t long before he became a globally sought after filmmaker of stellar commercials and feature films.

1. Philips LCD Televisions, Carousel

Advertising Agency: DDB, London and DDB Tribal, Amsterdam

This online commercial and Cannes International Advertising Festival Grand Prix winner by filmmaker Adam Berg, depicts frozen moments in time of a bank robbery gone wrong.

Adam used a state of the art motion-camera filming rig to visually dramatise the story in a masterly single tracking shot that resulted in highly compelling viewing.

2. Uber Transport Company, Boxes

Advertising Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors, Gothenburg, Sweden

Filmed on location in Bangkok, Adam Berg directed this humorous commercial with over 200 extras to demonstrate the seriousness of city traffic congestion and the increasing shortage of vehicle parking spaces.

Uber’s message is, that together with reliable rail and bus transit systems, Ridesharing companies are part of the solution to creating a viable alternative to private car ownership that can greatly free-up Asia’s congested urban hubs, and speed-up commuter mobility.

3. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Dreams

Advertising Agency: Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Oregon, USA

For their innovative, virtual reality powered Galaxy S7 Edge, Samsung Mobile partnered with Oculus, a leading specialist renowned for pioneering the development of virtual reality technology.

Like dreams, where anything is possible, filmmaker Adam Berg’s, breathtaking filmic depictions for ‘Dreams’ are wondrous and compelling to behold.

As the scenario’s voice-over narrator says: “Dreams are awesome”.

“Even if dreams become nightmares where all your teeth fall out and suddenly you’re in school, it’s only a dream and your crush loves you anyway”.

“So if you could experience anything in a dream just by putting the phone to your face, why wouldn’t you get that phone?”

4. Gillette, Bond Moments

Advertising Agency: Grey Advertising, New York, USA

Filmmaker Adam Berg directed this Gillette commercial of fluid action sequences of 007 ‘close-shaves’ to coincide with the launch of ‘Spectre’, the 24th James Bond film by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

A voice-over introduces a great quote by Author Ian Fleming, the originator of the Commander James Bond, secret-agent 007, adventure novels.

The impressive visual effects were done by ‘The Mill VFX & Design’ studios.

5. Budweiser, Wind Never Felt Better

Advertising Agency: David, Miami, USA

Filmed in California, the 2019 Super Bowl commercial, directed by filmmaker Adam Berg, celebrates Anheuser-Busch’s achievement of establishing Budweiser as the first major beer brand to be brewed with 100% renewable energy generated from wind power.

Angie Slaughter, Anheuser-Busch’s Vice President of sustainability summed up the company’s brand communication rationale as follows:

“It’s for dog lovers. It’s for Clydesdale lovers. It’s for beer lovers. It’s for Earth lovers. The commercial is bigger than beer. It speaks to something we should all be thinking about every single day”.

6. IKEA, Happy Inside

Advertising Agency: Mother, London, UK

A hundred cats were released inside Britain’s IKEA Wembley store for an integrated TV campaign to promote their new catalogue. The commercial also endorses the insightful acknowledgement that many household pet lovers consider their cats to be part of the family.

Filmmaker and director Adam Berg had no idea what to expect once the cats were released, but skilfully managed to produce a result that made for popular family viewing in the UK and far beyond.

The multi-award commercial is beautifully underscored by a soundtrack of Mara Carlyle’s song “Pianni”, from her debut album, ‘The Lovely’.

7. Nike, My Time Is Now

Advertising Agency: Wieden+Kennedy, London, UK

The Nike integrated ‘My Time Is Now’ campaign, and Cannes Lions Grand Prix winner, was spearheaded by an interactive online commercial with 9 tunnels of challenging hidden content for football fans to discover and explore.

Supported by a made-for-television commercial, the multi-media global campaign motivated 12 million viewer interactions within a week after being launched.

Filmed in Barcelona, Madrid, and London and directed by filmmaker Adam Berg, the action packed scenario features an International lineup of the world’s best young players, who are overwhelmingly eager to make their mark. They cannot be held back, their time is now.

8. Volvo V90, Epilogue

Advertising Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors, Gothenburg, Sweden

Volvo’s ‘Epilogue’ commercial is an emotive tribute to Swedish football player
Zlatan Ibrahimović who is one of the most decorated footballers in the world, having won 31 trophies in his career, and widely regarded as one of the best strikers of all time.

Directed by filmmaker Adam Berg with keenly observed humanity, the long-form storytelling scenario of Zlatan’s road trip home following Sweden’s disappointing Euro 2016 Defeat by Belgium, features an atmospheric and moving portrayal of impressive depth.

9. Samsung Smart TV, King of TV City

Advertising Agency: CHI & Partners, London

Directed by Adam Berg and filmed in Cape Town, the commercial features many dramatic scenes and references from iconic movies that include UFO’s and a close encounter with a T-Rex. The special effects are very impressive and make for rewarding viewing.

10. Honda Acura, Let The Race Begin

Advertising Agency: MullenLowe, Boston, USA

Directed by filmmaker Adam Berg for Acura, Honda’s luxury vehicle division of automobiles, the futuristic depiction of a dramatic horse race, is a very watchable analogy of competing high-performance car brands.

Four mechanical horses leave the starting gate only to be overtaken by a real thoroughbred. The analogy being that real progress can only be achieved when it comes alive with a heart by engineers and technicians with a passion for their automotive design skills.

The initial horse racing races were performed and filmed live at Fairplex Park in Pomona, California, and converted into robotic horses with after-effects by post-production company MPC, Los Angeles, USA.