The Bear (L'Ours)

Why it works

For most of the film, Paul Bearman is a tantrum-prone Hollywood director shooting a gothic epic; the twist is that he is a bearskin rug shaped by years of watching Canal+ from a living-room floor. BETC Paris built the spot on a sly observation, that a rug sees more films than any person, to dramatise the channel's promise that the more you watch Canal+, the more you love cinema. Director Matthijs van Heijningen shot a real actor in Prague; Mikros Image replaced that motion-captured performance, strand by strand, with a computer-generated bear, which is why the beast acts rather than animates. It is studied as a lesson in turning a brand promise into a character, with craft as proof of product. Launched on YouTube on October 12, 2011 and on TV four days later, it posted the best impact score of any Canal+ ad, won the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes in 2012 and a D&AD Yellow Pencil, and became the Gunn Report's most awarded TV commercial ever.