Welcome to the era of non-ad ad films

Let’s imagine you are scrolling on your newsfeed on Facebook and you come across a video. You start watching it, the story grips you and you are keen to find out what happens at the end. It is only in the last few seconds that you find out it was an advertisement and you go “What the…”. I don’t know about you, but these videos — let’s call them viral non-ad ads — are becoming a common phenomenon. Let me rephrase: more and more brands are trying to take this route (because who wouldn’t want their ad films to go viral) but only a few are succeeding in producing compelling narratives that reveal the brand at the very last second.