Imagine (Periscope)

Why it works

Two bricks and one word. FCB Johannesburg's press ad for LEGO shows a periscope made of LEGO pieces poking up out of a flat blue LEGO "sea" under the single line "Imagine"; the reader supplies the submarine. It ran in South Africa at the end of 2005 and the following June won the Press Grand Prix at Cannes, South Africa’s first. The jury was split almost evenly between it and a JWT India campaign for Levi's until president David Droga used his deciding vote for LEGO, praising an old-school ad, simple and clean, brought to life by the brand's DNA. It is studied as a lesson in leaving work for the audience: the ad shows almost nothing and lets the reader complete the picture, demonstrating the very benefit it sells. As executive creative director Brett Morris put it, if two pieces can open up a world, imagine a whole set.