DU | TOO DEPRESSING (Cinema Tuesdays) | 2014
Too lonely to laugh. Except you will. / DU "TOO DEPRESSING"
Watching a movie alone, in a theater, and it's a hopeless tragedy on top of that. Is there a crueler punishment? The first time I saw this ad from du, I laughed so hard I cried. I couldn't believe something this dark actually got approved.
The problem
UAE telecom company du ran a promotion called "du Tuesday," giving out two movie tickets for the price of one every Tuesday. Most promotions like this just say "it's cheap." But what people actually want, sometimes, is simply having someone next to them.
The insight
The loneliness of watching a heavy film by yourself is a quiet kind of misery, but a real one. That's what Leo Burnett Dubai zeroed in on. The 2-for-1 deal wasn't a discount, it was a prescription for loneliness. The person behind the campaign described the job as "dark and unexpected."
The idea
They built out a devastating scene, good enough for any indie film: a son with cancer and his starving mother sharing one last meal. Then the cut changes, and you see a man watching it alone in a movie theater. One line, "TOO DEPRESSING TO WATCH ALONE," flips it into comedy and leads straight into du Tuesday's 2-for-1 offer. It was shot on a low budget in Beirut, with the director reportedly given full creative control.
What happened
It became the first work from the MENA region to win a Cannes Lions Film Gold, and went on to win the Black Cube (Best in Show) at the New York ADC Awards. The four-film series, including "Too Depressing," swept awards across multiple countries.
Afterthought
A piece of regional creative work winning Best in Show in New York is thrilling on its own. The nerve it took to push through the worry that it might be "too dark" and just commit to the idea is impressive. Turning loneliness into comedy, built on a structure everyone can relate to, is what makes it so strong. This is the kind of work I'd love to make myself.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2014
