Surfer
Guinness1999
Surfer is a 1999 60-second television commercial for Guinness, created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, London.
The line
Good things come to those who wait.
Why it works
A beer's pour time turned into myth. AMV BBDO won the Guinness account on a product truth — a proper pint takes time to settle — and expressed it as "Good things come to those who wait." Jonathan Glazer's black-and-white film answers the brief with a Polynesian surfer waiting out the ocean, then riding a wave that erupts into white horses, cut to Leftfield's "Phat Planet" and a voiceover riffing on Moby-Dick's Ahab. Launched on St. Patrick's Day 1999, it is studied as the high-water mark of pure commercial film craft — metaphor, montage, sound design and restraint in sixty seconds — and for how an operational drawback became the brand's entire personality. It was voted the best ad of all time in Channel 4 and The Sunday Times' "100 Greatest TV Ads" poll, and Glazer went on to direct feature films including the BAFTA-winning The Zone of Interest.
Techniques
- Card stacking Recasts the long wait for a properly settled pint, an operational drawback, as the patient virtue that defines the whole brand.
- Storytelling A surfer waits out the ocean and then rides a wave that erupts into white horses, a parable whose payoff rewards patience.
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