Ridley Scott returns to ads with Orange work

Orange is celebrating its fourth birthday next week with a pounds 7

million advertising campaign that positions the mobile phone operator as

a cutting-edge technology company.

The campaign is spearheaded by a 90-second commercial directed by Ridley

Scott, who returned to commercials for the first time in eight years to

make the film. Created by WCRS, its debut - during News at Ten on 28

April - will accompany the launch of a new service by Orange.

Robert Fallow, Orange’s marketing director, would not give details of

the new product, except to claim that it had ’never been thought of by

anyone before. It will be promoted by a new animated campaign, also

through WCRS, in two weeks.’

Filmed in other-worldly colours, Scott’s ad takes a tongue-in-cheek look

at a future where technology has become oppressive.

It opens with a postman delivering letters to some delighted children as

the voiceover declares: ’E-mail will make the written word a thing of

the past.’

With similar irony, the narrator declares that, in the future, people

will no longer need to travel because video conferencing will make it

redundant; children won’t need to play football because of video games,

and no-one will go to the cinema since films will be available at home

through cable and satellite television.

Finally, the commercial dares to suggest there will be no place for

different sexes in this technologically advanced future. At this stage,

however, we realise this bleak vision is not from our world at all, as

the camera pulls back to reveal the earth hanging in the night sky where

the moon would normally be. It is all happening on another planet.

’Orange don’t think technology should change the world - just make it a

better place,’ the voiceover concludes. The commercial was written by

Larry Barker, the former joint creative director of WCRS, and his

successor, Leon Jaume.

Art direction was by the joint creative director, Rooney Carruthers.

Scott directed through his company, RSA Films. Media planning and buying

on Orange is handled by Mediapolis.

This article was first published on Campaign