My Favourite Rodrigo Saavedra Commercials

Latest, ACES Favourites: This is another edition to the globally popular ACES series, of featuring commercial filmmakers and directors that I admire for their skills in bringing creative concepts and storylines to enthralling life.

Rodrigo Saavedra

Based in Lisbon, Portugal, Rodrigo Saavedra is a multi award-winning filmmaker and director, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and co-founder of Immigrant, a production company with offices in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London, and São Paulo. 

A graduate of Central St Martins College of Art and Design in London, Rodrigo worked as an Art Director and Copywriter, at Mother London, WCRS London, and Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam, before his enterprising ventures into his widely lauded, visionary filmmaking and directing realisations, often drawing his own storyboards.

The superbly produced commercial, with its painstakingly detailed art-direction of various era representations, features a soundtrack by philharmonic orchestral composer, and songwriter Georges Delerue’s, “Le Grand Choral”, from François Truffaut film, “La Nuit Américaine”.

Now the “owner” of some of the world’s most desired items, the eccentric, ingenious, and mysterious thief, transports viewers to a world of magic, mystery and temptation from within his luxurious mansion, with an enigmatic tale about a legend that Casillero Del Diablo wine is so good, it’s protected by the devil, and asks viewers, “Would you steal from the devil?”. Even as the world’s greatest thief, he certainly would not.

The Devil’s Cellar Wine Legend

This legend began more than 130 years ago, when winemaker Don Melchor de Concha, reserved an exclusive batch of his best wines for himself, and to keep strangers away from this special private reserve, he spread the rumour that the Devil lived in his cellar. Hence the name: Casillero del Diablo, ‘The Devil’s Cellar’.

Masterly directed by filmmaker Rodrigo Saavedra, the 2022 commercial spearheading O2’s integrated campaign, takes one into the habitats of a building’s residents from the point of view of a Pizza delivery girl, who has to visit several apartments before finding  someone named ‘Alex’.   

In her epic search for ‘Alex’, to diligently deliver the Pizza, eye-catching sets designed to give an insight into different apartments, reveal the very different ways in which residents of different ages and demographics, use the internet in their home environments.

Working, dancing to online radio with smart speakers, home streaming, uploading videos, and many more activities, demonstrate how everything is possible with O2’s high-speed internet.

Using Twitch and Minecraft, an interactive, one-to-one, walk-through of the commercial’s  phantasmagorical apartment block, offered gaming enthusiasts something surprising to be discovered in every home, and around every corner, leading to an opportunity of winning numerous prizes, that included five PlayStation 5’s, and ten Xbox Series X’s that were up for grabs.

Publicis Milan advertising agency’s tongue-in-cheek, 2023 ’Cheers Or No Cheers’ film scenario, was brought to cinematic life by filmmaker and director Rodrigo Saavedra.

Filmed in Portugal, and featuring a soundtrack of Stevie Wonder’s song “Superstition”, the impressively produced time-travel portrayals, are entertaining send ups, of teetotallers who throughout history, have been social outsiders of not responding with an appropriate tipple to ‘good-cheer’ occasions.

But now with zero alcohol Heineken, teetotallers can participate socially in cheering to their heart’s content with broad smiles all around.

BBH Singapore advertising agency’s 2023, highly amusing, and superbly produced commercial for Samsung’s Neo QLED 8K, masterly directed by filmmaker Rodrigo Saavedra, stars Bebo, the grumpiest cat on the planet, who is almost impossible to impress.

Almost, but but not totally impossible to impress however, thanks to the ‘more wow than ever’, high resolution picture quality and surround sound, of Samsung’s amazing Quantum dot-based TV of 8,000 pixels.

Leo Burnet agency’s 2016, Corona ‘desfronterízate’ advertising theme, of breaking mental barriers and continuing to move forward, underlines Corona as one of Mexico’s biggest and most famous brands internationally, becoming something of symbol for a modern Mexico, that’s ambitious, confident and worldly.

Directed by esteemed filmmaker Rodrigo Saavedra, ‘The Wall’ scenario was brought to dynamic life, in a motivational commercial, starring Mexican actor, Diego Dionisio Luna Alexander, best known for his portrayal of Cassian Andor in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

On the LBB website, Juan-Pablo Camargo Villaseñor, VP of Strategic Planning at Leo Burnett Mexico remarked; “The Wall’ was a good test for our positioning and brand ideal, to see if our brand was strong and we were in a position to talk about that issue.”

“It’s not the type of strategy where you have your brand ideals set in paper and you just work through that for three years. This is really an ‘alive strategy’ that’s in constant discussion about responsiveness to unfolding events.”