High Five: Slices of Life

Having a kid is great, but I understand if you do not want to taste that feeling. I used to not get it, but after Leo, I do. Having a kid is also by far the most challenging and scary thing you can do. As a parent, you can experience happiness and grief, pride and frustration, and see yourself as both a superhero and the worst villain on the same day. The thing is, you don't know that before your first. So when life brings you the second one, you better be right. Scared, but right. I love this Coca-Cola piece because it captures all of that feeling. The casting, the soundtrack, the scenario - everything is so true and raw that you can see yourself there, living in all of those moments. That's how life is, without visual effects or fake promises. Even the product comes in a natural way that doesn’t bother. It's just a detail. It's not about drinking Coca-Cola Life, but instead that we know how life is and we are on it together.

We've been living in a comparative world, and social networks just make everything worse. There is always someone living a better life, in a bigger home, with a more expensive car, traveling around the world, making more money, looking younger and being more beautiful than us. All that works like an unseeing force that brings us down, killing our self-esteem. The truth is, when we take a look at someone, we only see the good things, but when we take a look at ourselves, we just see the bad. That's why this Dove campaign is a masterpiece. It brings us the whole truth about how we misjudge ourselves. The idea is simple, but absolutely brilliant, and I am not talking about how they filmed it. It's great, but let me focus on the feeling. When I talk about myself, I used to highlight all the things I didn't like, as if it's what other people also see. But guess what? They don't. Dove shows us in three minutes how unfair we are to ourselves, and how we are more beautiful than we think. 

There is an important lesson we all try to learn when we start to understand the world - it's what's inside that matters. I have heard that a lot, and you've probably heard it too, haven't you? Well, in 2012, Intel and Toshiba launched a campaign that was based just on that. 'The Beauty Inside' was a six-episode web series that brought us a well-produced story about a guy named Alex, that wakes up every morning in a different body, being someone else. So, as you can imagine, Alex lives a lonely life with shallow relationships, until BANG! He falls in love. When you are a different person every day and want to someone know you well, what's left? Exactly. What you are inside. I will not tell you about the end of the story. If you are curious, have a look. The main point here is that 'The Beauty Inside' is not about how good-looking we need to be or how much money we need to have, but what we are in our essence. That's key, and nobody believes in it. It's so nice when a brand helps us to believe...

I love sports, and for the last twelve years, I've been waking up before the sun rises to run. Over all these years, I have run two marathons and a bunch of half marathons here in Brazil and abroad. If you, like me, practice any sport, you probably witnessed someone like this kid on the Nike campaign. At first glance, there's no fit between the kid and what he's doing. As if running or any other sport only matches people in nice athletic shapes (or Olympian athletes, since the campaign came up close to the 2012 Olympic Games). That's silly, and Nike knows it. Nike also knows that greatness is a matter of who we want to be instead of who we are, and you don't need too much to tell us that. One lovely photograph in a random place, a great cast and fantastic copywriting turn this piece into a powerful message to everyone. Brave and bold as life is.

I couldn't forget to bring this Diesel campaign to this list. Not only because it is a delicate, bold and well-filmed story, but also because features one of the most important messages we need to spread nowadays - 'Let people be whoever they want to be'. That's it. If you do not agree with that, I am sorry, but what can I do? That’s life.