Outfit (Identity Theft)

Why it works

A middle-aged man sits in his wood-panelled den with a can of beer in front of the TV, and out of his mouth comes the giddy voice of a young woman gloating about the $1,500 leather bustier she has just bought. The voice belongs to the thief who stole his card. Fallon built Citibank's launch of its Identity Theft Solutions service on that one device, a victim lip-syncing the criminal, repeated across spots with other mismatched pairs: a hip young woman with a nasal teenage boy, a sweet retiree with a gruff trucker. The team realised five days before the shoot that the voices were the idea, recorded them first and auditioned more than 250 for each role. It is studied as a lesson in dramatising an invisible, frightening crime without hectoring, through a single simple and repeatable idea. Directed by Kevin Thomas, the campaign was Adweek's campaign of the year for 2003, and "Outfit" won the 2004 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Commercial.