Remember Google’s ‘Dear Sophie,’ ‘Loretta,’ and that one about the sweaty student trying to get his rocks off in France? Oh, how they moved us. The stories felt real, inspiring and made you want to use the product. I remember my wife creating an email for our newborn after ‘Dear Sophie’ and sending at least four messages.
‘New Home’ feels like they started with Gemini and tried to reverse-engineer an authentic story. It’s true that moving is fraught with emotion, for kids and adults alike. However, the truth of the story and its moments didn’t quite land for me in the way they did in the others.
Jake Reilly, group creative director, Dentsu Creative
For the last few years, I’ve been—not anti-AI—but sort of just generally unimpressed by its utility. I heard it described as a solution in search of a problem, which has felt spot on. For me, the advertising for the first few years of AI tools just put a spotlight on that same issue. Brands trying to sell us on the value of bots doing simple human things that we either don’t need help with, or bots doing the creative things in life that make life worth living. Lots of creative swings and misses early on in the AI era IMO. In the last few months though, the creative work for AI has been getting better. I’ve enjoyed almost all of the work for Claude via Mother London (including one of this year’s best SB spots) and even some of Isle of Any’s work for OpenAI. Both brands have learned to not overpromise what these tools can do, keeping the focus on the human storytelling, and thus haven’t triggered my gag reflex as much.
This year’s Google spot for Gemini continues that positive trend. As a dad with kids who are about the same age as the kid in this spot, I think this film from Google did a nice job showing the actual utility of the tool. I, like most people, really hated their Olympic spot from a few years ago that had a dad suggesting his kid use Gemini to help them write a letter to their favorite athlete, because that felt actively denigrating of a childhood, taking away something really special and important that they should be learning to do on their own. This effort for Gemini, especially as the tool itself has improved to include image generation like we see in the spot, feels more additive. Something that would otherwise be hard for a kid emotionally is smoothed out and feels more exciting, thanks to the tool. That, to me, is non-negative, which honestly at this point feels like the goal for AI work given the near universal skepticism of the industry itself.
Craft-wise, I like the simplicity of the story, the pared back music, and the authentic feel of the Mom and son. It didn’t blow me away creatively by any means, but I think it’s a nice story that will play nicely with audiences who have taken more of a liking to heartfelt stories a la Farmers Dog in 2023 and even the Lays work from the last few years.
