These new adverts from Spotify inspired an impromptu fit of laughter in my living room last week. Both spots were created to highlight the streaming service's family membership. Now, I could describe the ads to you but I think it is a lot funnier if you watch them yourself. Prepare to cringe but also laugh your head off at these hilarious family musical moments.

Rating: 10/10

Part of a planner's role in an agency is understanding the consumer's behaviour at key moments, or identifying tension points along the customer journey. The next task is to work out ways to alleviate them. These can be existing problems that traditional solutions can't solve or solutions that are no longer effective. Today in our digitally lead world, technology can unlock new ways to approach the same problems that have been plaguing us for so many years.

RGA did just that with their activation to mark Air Max Day 2017. To launch NIKEiD in Eastern Europe and the Middle East during this year's global Air Max Day, RGA created an interactive installation that generates custom designed Air Max sneakers based your outfit and instantly prints a photo of the shoes, along with a link to the design in NIKEiD.

So what problem are they solving? Having too much choice can be crippling. Limiting our choice or helping us to make a decision is something we as consumers carve. In the book, "The Paradox of Choice" the psychologist and author Barry Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. RGA recognised that the “blank canvas” of NIKEiD can be intimidating, so they facilitated self-expression by designing sneakers based on what you are already wearing. Traditional methods, for example, having a shop assistant to help customers wouldn't be as effective because NIKiD is all about your individual style and the freedom to design the trainers yourself. So having someone design it for you defeats the point. However, having an unbiased AI use your swagger to help you express your own style, is solving this problem and makes this offering more attractive.

Results: In 10 days, 10,000 people got custom Air Max, and 16% followed the link to Nike.com/iD.

Rating: 10/10

"Umm, I will have a black coffee." 

"Would you like the beans partially steamed first?"

"Errr, sure why not?"

Long gone are the days when you can ask for a black coffee, and get a black coffee - well, certainly not in London anyway!

Since hipsters became London's tastemakers, everything we consume has always got to have a slight twist to it. And coffee houses are no exception to the rule. But we have lived with "normal" coffee this long and it has always got us through that Monday morning meeting so, as the saying goes, if it ain't broke why fix it? I ordered a coffee and that's what I want, you can keep your handmade straws to yourself.

Leo Burnett has picked up on the growing hypocrisy that is London's coffee shops and has used it to great affect. The campaign contrasts the simplicity and great taste of a Maccy D's McCafe with the complexity of the urban hipster coffee culture with it's high price points and extravagant menus. The ad shows increasingly confused customers finally ending up at the fast-food giant, where they get what they asked for - a nice normal coffee minus the huge price tag.

The humour filled spot shows how McDonald's is the antithesis to the complication in a way that will resonate with anyone who has tried to purchase a coffee in London in the past few years. Tapping into this often private, unspoken grievance with this overly fussy cultural moment, presents this challenger brand (McCafe) as the smart choice that will actually meet your needs - after all, you are just looking for a coffee! 

Creative director Matt Lee said, “We’re reminding people that if you’re simply after a great tasting cup of coffee, without the fuss, then McDonald’s is the place for you. If you prefer an artisanal Amazonian blend, served with a rumour of yak’s milk in a reclaimed jam jar, then you might want to go somewhere else.”

An ad decrying hipsters instead of championing them is very welcome in my eyes, although I do like a game of table tennis and if it comes free with my coffee then...

Rating: 9/10

Just like Tesco's, Sainsbury's has departed from its traditional price/ product focused executions. But unlike Tesco's "Food Love Stories", which clearly has life after the initial execution, questions remain over the longevity of Sainsbury's #fooddancing campaign?

The ad is the first execution by newly appointed W&K London and shows food lovers dancing in their kitchen as they prepare dishes. It is set to a specially-created background track Food Dancing (Yum Yum Yum) by UK artist MysDiggi that will be released on Spotify.

Now, there are some things that I really like about the campaign. It's different for one. It's nice to see another retailer moving away from a traditional approach to advertising. Watching people dance around to a catchy number, certainly brings a smile to my face especially as I can relate! I have been known to shake what my mother gave me while cooking up a storm in the kitchen. W&K have clearly looked at our behaviours when we prepare a meal and picked out a very fun and engaging one to champion. I also like the fact that given the fun and shareability of such content their pleas for people to use the hashtag on social media probably won't fall on death ears.

That being said, their are a few things that I do take issue with. Firstly, who is MysDiggi? Now, I know the hope with the song is that ‘Yum Yum Yum" will be a viral hit. But the year's of "gangnam style" and "crazy frog" are behind us (thank god) and it takes a lot more than a catchy tune to go viral. You need the right influencers, distribution and often an artist that's known!

And what's with the "fake" authenticity? The film is deliberately shot in a low-fi, hand-held style, to give an authentic perspective, as though captured by the individual featured. But I can't help but think, why didn't you just get them to film themselves in the first place. The quality is already low so that issue with UGC is irrelevant in this case. For me, if you want to be authentic, you should be authentic. You try to fake it it defeats the point. 

But my biggest question is how will this live for the next 6 months? The Sainsbury’s director of brand communications Mark Given says: “ #fooddancing...is a big part of living well" and at the end of the spot it even says "#FoodDancing is living well". So maybe this part of an overarching strategy to provide insight into what the strapline actually means. If that is the case, I can't what to see further articulations of the "Living Well" strapline.

Rating: TBD

Special offers, price points, premium ranges - traditionally, these are the areas in which supermarkets compete. Indeed in recent years the price-focused ads of Morrisons and those of Lidl and Aldi have been very effective in enticing customers away from the established powerhouses that are Tesco, 

Sainsbury and Waitrose. But, this me-too form of advertising is fast becoming tiresome and it is all about short-term, key "trade moment" gains. They are not brand building or perception changing. The only one in this category to do that was Lidl with #lidlsurprises. However, after x amount of iterations of the same campaign, their messaging no longer has the same potency. Well, last month we saw Tesco take a lap of faith and talk about something else and boy was it refreshing!

Revising the way it talks about food in its advertising, Tesco has moved away from heroing particular products or promoting individual items to instead highlighting its quality credentials and the passion and care that goes into the meals its customers prepare. It is no longer about championing their food and their brand, instead it's all about championing the customer's story.

Merely setting the parameters and context ("Food Love Stories"), Tesco's is allowing the customers to tell their own brand story in an authentic and emotive way. Using real-life stories makes it more relatable and allows you to emphasis and connect more with the campaign and, in turn, the brand. 

The power of UGC has been recognised for many years now but seldom do brands use it well or imaginatively. Asking consumers to use your hashtag and post a picture with them using your product isn't going to win fans or awards anytime soon. But setting up a platform for consumers to get peer to peer tips, advice and inspiration is a great way to engineer brand love. To this effect, Tesco has launched a content hub with ingredients and recipe cards for the featured meals, which will also be available in its large stores to ensure that customers can engage and be involved with this campaign beyond the OOH. 

While I do enjoy the refreshing nature of this campaign, in order to achieve the objective of highlighting the quality of Tesco's products, some work may need to be done to the next iterations. At present the focus is very much on the story behind the meal and not on the quality of the ingredients going into it. But I am sure this will be addressed in the future. For now, I am just going to enjoy the great recipes that are being featured!

Rating: 9/10

You would have had to have had no access to the internet for the past 6 months to have avoided seeing at least one attempt at the mannequin challenge. But for those who are ignorant to this cultural phenomenon (and basically the world around them), here's a little explanation I found on wiki:

 "The Mannequin Challenge is a viral Internet video trend where people remain frozen in action like mannequins while a moving camera films them, usually with the song "Black Beatles" by Rae Sremmurd playing in the background."

Now everyone is up to speed,  let's examine Unicef's version of the challenge. Unicef claims it's "the most powerful #MannequinChallenge yet" and they are not wrong.  The video was created to highlight the issue of female genital mutilation and ends with the evil act about to be performed on an innocent young girl.

Unicef's attempt to raise awareness about the female genital mutilation, was well received on social media. Many shared the video and said that it had a powerful message. While I think that this praise is more than justified, my only criticism is its distribution strategy.

Instead of relying on "owned" social channels, Unicef needed to involve the influencers that made this challenge infamous. They also needed to identify the platform that would be used as their main distribution vehicle. Instagram is where this challenge rose to fame and where most people engaged with it, therefore this should have been their main vehicle to push the video.  I am sure someone like "King Bach" would have no has problem with sharing the video - I mean, it would only benefit his public image.

But, that being said all in all this campaign is brilliant. It serves as an excellent example of a brand using culture in an authentic, organic way to share a poignant message. 

I think other brands would do well to take a leaf out of Unicef's book!