"This is a wet freakin' martini"
This week's most interesting videos, made by and for organisations.
This video does the rounds every so often: Pharrell Williams visits NYU and meets music student Maggie Rogers. He listens with polite interest as she explains how her style fuses folk and dance music, and then she plays him her song.
Within seconds, about 2:33 in the video, Pharrell's whole demeanour changes. He knows. He fucking knows, that this song, this artist, has something special.
I imagine there's a German word to describe that moment, when something hits you full force and trips a switch, like every light in a fairground being turned on at once.
You know it when you feel it – until seeing this video, I didn't realise you can spot when it happens to somebody else too.
Right, ok, videos...
Frontline 19 highlights NHS workers’ mental health struggles (2 mins)
Who takes care of the people who take care of us? Organisations like Frontline 19, which supports the UK's health workers, 1 in 4 of whom have considered suicide.
This packs one hell of a punch, filmed as though on CCTV, it makes us feel like we're intruding on these private moments. Which we are, but we need to, to understand what these people are going through.
I think bits of this are a slightly overdone – for me it works best in those heartbreakingly quiet moments where you see the struggles in myriad small ways. (Watch on YouTube)
London restaurant finds fame with its super simple Tik Tok skits (14s)
Fei Er cottage is a Chinese restaurant in London, quite near Buckingham Palace. Like many eateries, it's worked out that TikTok provides a pretty level creative playing field, and so funny, lo-fi videos can rack up a tonne of views.
This one tickled me – there's something about the way guy counts the dumplings with his chopstick that really makes me laugh. (Watch on TikTok)
Definitely this year’s best film made by a Thai yoghurt brand (5m 40s)
Last year, a friend on the Vimeo Staff Picks team sent me this wonderfully weird ad for Thai yoghurt company, Dutchie. I can't quite remember why I didn't feature it, but I'm rectifying that now because Dutchie is back, and my word they've served up another treat.
I thought it might be a super-cut of short spots until about half way through, when it lurches into its martial arts revenge gear. It's delightfully over-the-top, but some of my favourite moments come in slight pauses that last just a beat too long, and cleverly undercut the nonsense. (Watch on LinkedIn)
An arresting visual spectacle courtesy of an Indian steel company (2 mins)
Big steel companies aren't renowned for their creative output, so fair play to Jindal Steel, for this two-minute cavalcade of striking, beautiful and memorable visuals.
It's in no way a linear narrative, and yet it's so dynamic, and rich with detail, my brain processed it as a story. (Watch on Vimeo)
Salesforce parodies that Zoom-call idiot and his mind-numbing cliches (40s)
It takes some chutzpah for Salesforce – a tool synonymous with toe-curling corporate culture – to lampoon Zoom-call bullshit. But lampoon it they have, and they've done a terrific job.
I'm 100% sure I've met this guy. In some deep, disquieting part of my soul, I’m worried that maybe, on occasions, I've been this guy. (Watch on TikTok)
Ajax pays an animated to a Dutch football legend (20s)
Behold Ajax's stop-motion celebration of the iconic Dutch footballer, Johan Cruyff, released on what would have been his 77th birthday.
Amsterdam’s streetscape is covered in stickers and posters, and so this a fitting way to pay tribute to one of its favourite sons. (Watch on Instagram)
How to Buy a Mountain Bike is also How to Make a Memorable Ad (5 mins)
"Look at you, you're a mediocre sack of garbage stuck in a dead-end job with nothing in life to make you happy." From the opening line, you realise this isn't your average promo for high-end leisure equipment, and it just gets better from there.
It appears to have been made for the Trek bike brand, but honestly that's so hidden in the end credits, that the provenance remains unclear. No matter, with 16 million views in the five years since it was released, this is a great example of what different really looks like. (Watch on YouTube)
Thanks to Dave G for the recommendation!
Behind-the-scenes of The New Yorker’s urgent Martini exposé (1 min)
For every journalist dodging bullets in a war zone, there is another making a ludicrously fun living at the other end of that profession. Take Gary Shteyngart, who recently took a martini tour of New York for the city's most famous magazine.
This short video gives a fun flavour of the rigorous journalistic graft that went into his intrepid assignment. (Watch on Instagram)
"As our teams venture into the unknown of AI, imagination itself will be our most fierce ally. So we must be fluent in all its forms."
Brian Collins