Guinness tonight launches the most expensive TV ad in its 80-year marketing history, with highly unusual domino rally.
The ad - part of a £10m campaign - begins with 6,000 dominoes, leading on to objects such as books, paint cans, tyres, flaming hay bales, fridges, suitcases and even cars.
Created by ad agency AMV BBDO, "Tipping point" was directed by Nicolai Fugslig, the man behind the camera for Sony Bravia's "Balls" commercial.
Mr Fugslig said the combination of the intricacy of the shoot, the high altitude location in Argentina and the use of hundreds of villagers made filming the ad the "biggest challenge" of his career to date.
"The ad is fundamentally a celebration of community," said Paul Cornell, the marketing manager for Guinness at Diageo GB.
Guinness's ad has echoes of Honda's ground-breaking "Cog" ad from 2003, which featured a domino effect involving 85 car parts that took more than 600 takes to get right.
Like the Honda "Cog" film, the Guinness campaign uses no special effects in creating the chain reaction, bar a small amount of visual trickery at the end to get the trademark "pause" in the two-part pour behind a true pint of the Irish stout.
The Guinness ad will run in 30-, 60- and 90-second versions on TV from tonight and will be in cinemas and made available online from tomorrow.
The TV campaign is being supported by a digital marketing push, titled "La Fiesta de Toppling", in which Juan Ramon, the fictional mayor of the village in which the ad is set, leads an online challenge to complete 11 interlinked tasks. Users must unravel the clues to win solid gold dominoes.
"Tipping Point" forms part of a bumper spend by Guinness parent company Diageo on the stout brand over the past few months.
In September, the company launched a £6m ad campaign - using the strapline "Seconds from greatness" - that ran extensively during ITV's coverage of the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
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· The article above was amended on Monday November 12 2007. The advertisement in question was part of a campaign that cost £10m, it did not cost this amount to produce on it's own. This has been changed.
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