SBS in Australia does a magnificent job of covering the Tour de France. I plan to do a post about this very subject in the not to distant future. But, the one down side to the 3 week coverage is the repetitive nature of the ads shown. This is not so bad if the ads are entertaining, but when they are ads that use people rollerblading and try and tie that into gliding across a screen, I glaze over.
My favourite ad this year was from Skoda. It was terrific behind the scenes footage of pro cycling, and there was a massive kick at the begining of it that woke you up if you had dozed off.
The team mechanic hanging out of the car and dangling his press credentials into the spokes always had me watching through squinting eyes.
The SBS ad for their coverage was also excellent. If anyone knows the piece of music in the background, I would love to know.
And proof that HTC can make a reasonable ad, as opposed to the rubbish we got shown out here for 3 weeks, here is an ad they ran in the US.
And finally, a great ad from last years TdF. I still get a giggle out of it.
And just for being clever, this video wasn’t an ad, but I think it is worth sharing.
www.simonwhitfield.com – “Yeah but can Cavendish do this?” (@markcavendish) from swhitfield on Vimeo.
If you know of any others, good or bad, please leave a comment. I would love to see more of them.
I love the Contador and Schleck add
Gawd…I wish they had have shown the above HTC ad – much better than the crap we got. The Schleck/Contador ads were the winners for me last year.
As for SBS ad…felt these were better than this years..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9JgrY3JXIc and the others that go with them…and the 2009 ones too – can’t find them tho.
Oh man that HTC add rocks…
How awesome is the http://www.simonwhitfield.com video, a great advert for Lemond’s Revolution Trainer don’t you say.