Can a fairy tale survive the age of social media? / The Guardian "Three Little Pigs"

The problem

This was The Guardian's first TV commercial in 25 years, made to communicate the idea of "Open Journalism" championed by then editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger. In 2012, as social media was starting to transform reporting, the paper used a fairy tale to talk about what a newspaper should be.

The insight

The wolf is evil, the pigs are good — that kind of simple story doesn't hold up in today's media environment anymore. The Guardian believed that getting closer to the truth meant pulling in everything: amateurs, gossip, doubt, all of it. The idea reportedly made it through internally even though people called it "too ridiculous."

The idea

The film opens with the pigs boiling the wolf alive and getting arrested by a SWAT team. From there, the story keeps accelerating as it changes shape across print, the web, and social media. The whole point of the ad is captured in one single detail: the photo of the wolf using an inhaler wasn't taken by a journalist, but by an ordinary person who happened to be riding the same bus. The script was written by Matt Fitch and Mark Lewis, and it was directed by Ringan Ledwidge.

What happened

It aired on the Channel 4 network and in cinemas, and was also rolled out on YouTube and Facebook. The tagline "The Whole Picture" revived a line from a 1986 campaign. It won numerous awards including Eurobest, British Arrow, TED, and Adweek, and Adweek named it the best ad of 2012. BBH founder John Hegarty called it "the best ad BBH has ever made."

Afterthought

Watching it now, after living through the age of fake news, the optimism that ordinary citizens can contribute to journalism feels a little dazzling, almost too bright. And yet the honesty of this two minutes, in its attempt to believe in that, feels like it has stood the test of time. I love that even as the noise has only grown louder, it never gave up hope of seeing the whole picture.

Awards

• Cannes Lions Gold 2012

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