Gandhi

Why it works

Mahatma Gandhi walks into a bare hut, sits cross-legged, switches on a webcam and begins to speak, and his message of peace appears on a skyscraper facade, giant public screens, laptops and mobile phones before vast crowds and solitary listeners around the world. The words come from his 1947 address in New Delhi, and the closing line asks what kind of world we would have today if he had been able to communicate like this. Directed by Spike Lee for Young & Rubicam, it is studied as an audacious corporate-brand film that sold the idea of connection rather than any service, and as a much-debated example of a brand borrowing a historical figure's moral authority. It won a Bronze Lion at Cannes in 2005, a Clio and Italy's Mezzo Minuto d'Oro, and in 2012 the Key Award jury named it the Italian spot “best ever forever”.