Monkey (Walk Man '87)

Why it works

For thirty seconds a Japanese macaque named Choromatsu stands upright on two legs, Walkman in hand and headphones on, eyes closed as if lost in the music, while a voice observes that sound has evolved and asks whether people have. The spot launched Sony's WM-501 in 1987, a model with no dramatic new feature to shout about, so the producer and planner Takashi Nakahata proposed abandoning the usual list of improvements for a single striking image; copywriter Hiroshi Ichikura wrote the line. It is studied as a lesson in stillness and restraint, letting one arresting picture carry a mature product, and as one of the best-loved Japanese commercials of the 1980s. It won the top spot-commercial prize in the film category of the 27th ACC CM Festival, it is held in the Paley Center's advertising collection, and Nakahata later said sales rose 180 per cent, a figure that comes from its creator rather than from Sony.