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Colenso BBDO brings 'pomparkour' to life

Tue, 20 Jul 2010

Colenso BBDO has a new ad out for energy drink V and it’s a goodie.

It involves “pomparkour”, which is a mixture of “pompier” and “parkour”. Lost? Watch the ad first – go on, we’ll wait here – as it’ll go a long way to explaining things.

Pompier is the French “art” of using portable ladders to climb buildings – the sort of ladders you see in the ad, with a hook on the top – made popular by firemen.

Meanwhile, parkour is the mad urban art of jumping from building to building like Spiderman, only without the lycra.

(See a similar ad, Nike’s “Angry Chicken”, here.)

And the result is pomparkour: a “super hardcore form of urban traverse”.

The ad is intended to publicise V’s new drink Isokinetic, which is a bit like Mizone with the added guarana, for which V is famous.

It launched on Sunday night.

Colenso chief Nick Garrett assures Ad Hoc that all safety procedures were followed in the filming of the ad, and the subjects were wired up in case they fell.

The TVC is supported by print, and the ad’s website www.laddersport.co.nz takes users to the V Republic site.

It all follows on from the previous work involving the jetpack man (and the monster truck), but this time there’s no question about what’s real and what’s not. It’s all fair dinkum.

The guys in the ad (Kiwi blokes, by the sounds of it) have even performed at Cirque du Soleil, done martial arts, trampolining, and extreme tiddlywinks, so they know their danger onions.

Check out the website where you can Facebook it, Tweet it, email it and read about the history of the sport – as well as learn about the behind-the-scenes stuff, get tips and tricks (like “don’t try this at home, kids”) and see the ladders getting V-pimped.

This one gets full marks on the Ad-O-Meter.

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Colenso BBDO brings 'pomparkour' to life
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