You see, toucan make a good smartphone ad

OnePlus has unveiled a campaign to promote the newly launched OnePlus Nord 2 5G.

The phone in question is sold in India and Europe, and the work is running primarily on digital channels and paid social channels.

The film, created by OnePlus, Sweetshop and a directing duo known as Aggressive, does a nice job of showing the phone's features without trying our patience, because there's always a neat new visual just a second or two away. 

Here's what Victoria Jin, creative director at OnePlus, has to say about the creative approach:

We wanted to embrace the visual language of the metaverse, inspired by games like Fortnite, [as well as] Ready Player One and Facebook’s Horizon. OnePlus Nord 2’s features are integrated into the story like powerups in a gamified utopia. Instead of cyberpunk sleekness, there is technicolor airbrush.

The vibrant visualizations...were inspired by the explosive color at Holi festivals (or Festival of Color) in India, as well as animations the '90s generation grew up with (Pokemon, Detective Conan, Powerpuff Girls). The goal was to step away from cold alienating tech visualizing methodologies and present the specs in a way that is warm, hilarious, and an exuberant massage on the eyeballs.

Ad Nut could have done without that last phrase (you can stay away from Ad Nut's eyeballs, thank you very much), but otherwise agrees. Too many tech ads go in for the same kind of sleek, chrome-infused minimalism. Or worse yet, they go for grandiose statements about how our devices make the world a better place by connecting us and allowing us to self-actualise and be better people blah blah blah. Both of those choices are creatively constraining. Our experience of life inside our devices is anything but drab and dull, so there's plenty of creative grist to make use of. And Ad Nut submits that people buy new phones based more on new features than on grandiose promises. Communicating such facts gracefully is a juicy challenge, and this ad proves it can be done.

Plus, we get to see a species of giant volcano-dwelling toucans! And Ad Nut gets to write a truly appalling headline, which Ad Nut is not sorry about.

CREDITS

Client: OnePlus, Shenzhen
Creative Lead: Alexei Golob
Creative Director: Victoria Jin
Producer: Manu Yang
Marketing Project Manager: Dariana Komarova
Marketing Resources Department: Shadow Liu

Production Company: Sweetshop Shanghai
Director Duo: Aggressive / Daniel Shapiro & Alex Topaller
DOP: Kajetan Plis
Managing Director & Executive Producer: Laura Geagea
Producer: Ivy Low
Post Producer: Penny Woo
Production Assistant: Justin Zheng

Line Production Team: OTO Film Poland
Producer: Lukasz Tomasz Koltunowicz
Production Manager: Jan Bialoblocki
Production Assistant: Karol Nowicki
Offline Editor: Bartosz Maliszewski

Post Production for LED screens: TigreLab Art Barcelona
Project Lead: Federico Gonzalez Montoya
Producer: Camila Araujo

Colourist: Dominik Deras @ Young Colourist United, Poland

Post Production: Heckler Singapore
Executive Producer: Vanessa Thomas
Post Supervisor: Jamie Watson
Lead Online Artist: Pedro Santos
Online Artists & Compositors: Jason Phua, Bertrand Polivka, Nitin Amin, Ruiting
Wang, Meghan Dwyer
Online Assistant & IO: Johnson Lim
Post Assistant: Debbie Wu

Audio Post-Production: Massive Music Tokyo
Director of Creative Development for Asia/APAC: Tamon Fujimi
Music Composer: Rick Sakurai
Producer: Junya Terui

Ad Nut is a surprisingly literate woodland creature that for unknown reasons has an unhealthy obsession with advertising. Ad Nut gathers ads from all over Asia and the world for your viewing pleasure, because Ad Nut loves you. You can also check out Ad Nut's Advertising Hall of Fame, or read about Ad Nut's strange obsession with 'murderous beasts'.