Long awaited as the turning on of the Christmas lights, the famous Christmas Lottery advertisement has arrived to fulfill its mission: unite us to all Spaniards, even if it is to rant about something (something that is also very Christmassy and very much ours, yes sir!).
No more forced elevator conversations about how cold it is, no more uncomfortable silences looking at the ceiling or the floor (long live the middle term!), and we owe it all to the Oscar winnerAlejandro Amenábar as director of this year's El Gordo ad, because thanks to him we already have a topic of conversation that gives a buzz.
What is this year's Christmas lottery announcement about?
Danielle is the name of the short film directed by Amenábar, starring Charlotte Vega and Daniel Luque, in which a tourist guide from Madrid falls in love with a young alien with a certain air of Gwyneth P altrow and little communication skills.
During the twenty minutes that the short film lasts (yes, twenty minutes) this story is told where dreams are centered on shared love and hope (which gives its name to the metro stop where the the two protagonists met each day). Full of special moments captured by Danielle in the people on the street and that she turned into small balls of light that she deposited in a large sphere of energy.
Twenty minutes full of nods to the most representative of Christmas, but with a twist to avoid falling into the trite and with more metaphor than some are able to assimilate without starting to fume.Total… that doesn't seem to have convinced much.
Here you can see the full version of the spot:
“Have you seen the lottery ad yet? Whoa shit…! Let the bald man come back from Christmas!", and that's how the atmosphere begins, the vidilla of joining in the gossip, talking "about the Catalan" of the ad (with those terrifying winks about cava, adeu or that shitty guy who looks at the camera from above the shelf, have you seen it?).
By the way, for a time when dramatic commiseration is not used as the central theme (in desperate search of the easy tear and to take away the desire to spend your money on the lottery), which is decided betting on quality music and the most rancid topics that seal Christmas are touched with the ironic point of “this freaks out foreigners”, it turns out that the same viewers who were waiting for the novelty of the Christmas lottery announcement miss and demand the hackneyed year after year.Oh my god!
If it is difficult to satisfy everyone... No wonder the most conservative media outlets in the national press have deeply analyzed the facts and have come to the conclusion that so much creativity has been given to these advertisers out of hand .
Social networks are flooded with jokes
How could it be otherwise, the networks are on fire. The most parodied topics have been the duration of the commercials, where there was no lack of images of ladies asleep on the sofa snoring with their mouths open, comments on the number of statements of independence that would have given Puigdemont time to do…
The most cinephiles compared the similarity with the movie "My girlfriend is an alien" and there have been no shortage of memes of the protagonist of the short in question together with E.T. transvestite as a woman, under the message “When you ask for a Martian in AliExpress vs. When you get home”.
If something was missing to be criticized, this was the high cost of the advertisement financed with public funds And debate has not been lacking, with much fuss and much disgust. Come on… how we like it! But let's think, hasn't the ad fulfilled its Christmas mission to unite us all... even if it's to rant together? Well, that's the Christmas spirit!
And for those who want a two for one, there is another plus to justify the expense. Well, if those in charge of appointing the creative team that produced the short decide to dispense with Leo Burnett's agency for next year's campaign, they already have in their there is a good repertoire of creatives on Twitter to choose from, who, through memes and imagination, have amply demonstrated their ability to make an idea go viral and without too much budget.