Love Story
Smooth E Babyface Foam2005
Love Story is a 2005 four-part serial television commercial for Smooth E Babyface Foam, created by JEH United, Bangkok.
Why it works
A four-episode soap opera that ran on Thai television for two months: Jum, a scruffy tomboy, blurts out her love for the school's handsome sepak takraw player and is rejected, takes a pharmacist's advice about her skin, wins him with a little help from Smooth E's foam, loses him when he flees a street fight, and finally learns that her timid best friend loved her all along. Jureeporn Thaidumrong of the newly founded JEH United modelled it on Thailand's rural travelling-medicine film shows, which stop the story at its most gripping moment to make an open sales pitch. It is studied as an influential early example of the episodic, comic long-form commercial that became a Thai specialty, treating the hard sell as part of the joke rather than something to hide. The series won a Gold Lion at Cannes in 2006 and Best of Film at ADFEST.
Techniques
- Storytelling Unfolds a four-episode soap opera in which a tomboy's love, rejection and skincare makeover end with the twist that her best friend loved her all along.
- Humour Treats the hard sell as part of the joke, borrowing the open sales pitches of travelling-medicine film shows that stop at the most gripping moment.
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