Wake the Town

This is the teaser for a Philips documentary. The story goes, Tribal DDB Amsterdam decided to test Philips' wake-up light in a city with perfect conditions: Longyearbyen, which suffers long winters of total sunlessness (and all the cold and sadness that comes with it).

Citizens were enlisted to test the wake-up light and evaluate honestly whether this made it easier to get up in the morning. Before you go, "hey, this is exactly like BBDO/Toronto's Tropicana sunshine thing in Inuvik," consider:

• Nothing's new in ad land. And if you're righteously skeptical about that claim, spend an afternoon perusing Joe La Pompe's blog.
• The experiences are different (and special in their own ways, like they say on the short bus!): this isn't sunshine filling the horizon and doubling the size of your pupils all in an instant. It's a wake-up light. The trials, I think, are individual and plenty more personal in this documentary format.
• This is so relevant to the product that it hurts: you get on-the-ground product testers in extreme conditions, disinclined to lie; and in a way, everyone who watches the documentary will be "trying" the product too: learning about it, identifying with testers' stories, cultivating an appreciation for Philips. That is far more resonant than a one-time stunt, even a Lion-meriting stunt, and I think it stands on its own.

This is gonna be a fun little docu to watch. But if you can't wait, read about the participating Longyearbyeners on wakeup.philips.com.

Via the Amsterdam Ad Blog.