Bear
John West2000
Bear is a 2000 television commercial for John West, created by Leo Burnett, London.
The line
John West endure the worst to bring you the best.
Why it works
A nature documentary ambushed by slapstick: a fisherman kung-fu fights a grizzly bear for a salmon — crotch-kick included — to prove John West "endure the worst to bring you the best." Paul Silburn's script was three words long ("man fights bear"); Daniel Kleinman shot it in the Scottish Highlands on a tiny budget, and it launched on November 21, 2000, the canned-fish brand's first TV ad in over a decade. Passed endlessly around early-internet inboxes, it has a serious claim to being one of the first viral video ads, was voted the funniest TV ad of all time in a 2008 industry poll, and won a Cannes Gold Lion and the British Television Advertising Awards Grand Prix. It is studied for comic rug-pull structure and for strategy hiding inside absurdity — the joke is the product claim.
Techniques
- Humour A nature documentary is ambushed by a fisherman kung-fu fighting a grizzly for a salmon, an absurd brawl that dramatises the brand's claim to endure the worst.
Sources · 3
Updated
