Hungry? (Moa / Synthetoceras)

Why it works

Starving cavemen chase dinner across a prehistoric plain, first a towering moa bird, then a Synthetoceras that wears the tribe out by popping up from hole after hole, until a deadpan voice asks, "Hungry?" and answers with Cup Noodle. Hakuhodo's Takuya Onuki began with the plainest proposition, eat this when you're hungry, then searched for people hungrier than anyone alive and landed in the Stone Age; he later called it a counter-message to bubble-era Japan, and said the English "hungry?" came late, during the shoot. Director Shinya Nakajima worked digitally but pushed the footage to look like film, staging his tribe on a dry lakebed north of Los Angeles. Two spots, "Moa" and "Synthetoceras," shared the Film Grand Prix at Cannes in 1993. It is studied as proof that one blunt benefit, exaggerated to absurdity, needs no translation; DDB Mudra's Sonal Dabral credits it with shaping later Japanese, Thai and Indian comedy, and when Cannes looped past winners in 2013 it drew applause on every pass.