Rohit Bhargava makes a great point about brand personalities; they have to be unique, they have to be authentic and they have to be talkable. What a better way to apply that than with the challenge of selling condoms to a culture of adults that resist advertising in general.

While Trojan has recently tried to leverage stopping power in their “pigs” campaign, Durex is going a decidedly more abstract route.

Durex Ad Featuring Balloon Animals
(NOTE: You May Need Headphones If You’re At Work)

What I love about this ad is the subtle then no subtle nod to “lifestyles.”  It attacks the notion of selling you on the idea of a condom as a part of those lifestyles with incredibly deft humor.

For me, the Trojan ad is unique and authentic but because of its darker, but its more direct route dampens it’s talkability. Durex’s ad is designed to surprise you and to get you to identify with the “diversity” of lifestyles.  In short; its a concept you can identify with and actually want to talk about, afterwords.

Kudos to Durex for a great ad…or for at least getting a friend of mine to post it on Facebook then to for getting me interested enough to write about it.