Ricky Gervais parts with artistic integrity in Australia for Optus’ ad to sell new iPhones
Comedian Ricky Gervais admits he’s prepared to undermine his artistic integrity in Australia, as Optus looks to capitalise on the release of the new iPhone today.
The two new spots, created by content marketing agency Emotive, follow the same format as the telco’s successful Netflix launch ads from earlier this year, with the creator of The Office speaking directly to camera in an anti-ad format.
In the first spot the Office creator reveals Optus called again asking him to do another advert, adding “what about people thinking I’ve undermined my artistic integrity? They said ‘it’s for Australia’, I said, ‘Yeah, alright'”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su6h866DrK4&feature=youtu.be
The Netflix spots had some relevance, with Ricky being a well known celeb and at the time the format was vaguely original.
This seems to be over-stretching that with a derivative execution and weird unrelated message tacked on the end.
Do we know if these ads actually sell phones?
Last time i liked him this time I don’t.
More quality comedy from Ricky. Well done Optus! I’d literally swap to them just for these ads. I left 3 Mobile for what they did to De La Souls ‘3 is a magic number’. Brutal
Ricky Gervais could read the phone book and it would be funny.
He just gets funny in the best way.
Simple
His laugh is funny
His character Derek and all the other characters are funny.
He writes funny
He is funny.
Of course, any commercial he does is going to be funny.
That’s a no-brainer…
His is the best kind of funny b/c it has kindness and compassion attached
Always liked Ricky, but really hate this ad. I’ll flick it off now every time it comes on. I think it’s insulting
Lazy. The first version was surprising and authentic to the Netflix stuff, the follow-up looks like it’s an ‘it worked last time, let’s just do it again’ strategy. Shame, Optus was starting to look interesting.