How Innovation Is Changing Advertising

The world of advertising is an ever-evolving landscape where boundaries are there to be pushed. Millions of people can watch one single advert and this makes the race for innovation fierce. These boundaries have just been steamrollered by Orange and the France national team’s advert for the upcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup.

The first thirty seconds or so of this advert the viewer watches a feast of French football, from Griezmann dropping a shoulder, to Mbappe scoring a delightful dink and a plethora of goals, from free kicks to bicycle kicks. However, halfway through, the music amplifies, the advert quickly rewinds and before our very eyes, the VFX is removed from the scenes we have just watched to reveal that it was in fact the women’s team and their players all along. It really is mesmerising to see the side by side clips, the VFX of Antoine Griezmann turning a defender inside out, directly alongside the original of Sakina Karchaoui actually being the one to do this.

It truly is powerful and poignant. Football is the world’s sport, and yet the women’s game has been so far behind the men’s for decades, whether that be through financing, support or global reach but it would be hard to watch this advert and not come away questioning, why? Following on from Wembley sell outs, Sky Sports deals and of course, the historic lionesses victory of recent times, this Women’s World Cup is promising to be the biggest yet. This is the kind of advert that makes you wonder, are there any boundaries on this ever-evolving landscape at all? Are the possibilities endless after all? As filmmakers it is our calling to explore and capture these possibilities and use them to as a force for a better, equal world.