Nivea - Back Home - (2021) 2:00 (Germany)

Paul Arden said, "Music is 90% of your commercial", and so - as he pointed out - the beautiful but cloying song is overpowering all of the performances in this ad. The performances are quite good, but the music is terrible in my opinion.  

For whatever reason, this young professional woman, Anna, has to move back into her mom's house, and from the moment she sits down in her (huge) girl room in her mother's (massive) apartment/house, I don't like her. (How many of us have single mothers with HUGE homes to welcome us?)

This irritation is cemented when her mother, so happy to see her, brings her a snack but is blown off. The young professional lady keeps working, shooing her mother off and even interrupting her mother's own health routines as her yoga exercise can be heard over zoom. Then one day, the daughter, just as she's beginning to treat her mother with a bit of respect and mutual love, gets abruptly laid off. Her mother comforts her. And this somehow sells Nivea.

Sorry, but if I use this "caring cream" on my baby, which I know has been the base strategy for decades, will she grow up to be an egotistical brat too? No thank you, Nivea. A mother's love may be irreplaceable, and we will certainly put up with almost anything, but what you depicted here was on the verge of elder abuse. "Juggling work, relations, and old habits, both Anna and her mom struggle to make their everyday come together." Nah, that kiddo was a brat who didn't see the gem that was her mother until she was laid off. Pass. Something in how this was directed and edited truly failed. 

But, perhaps I am the only one that feels that way, feel free to share your interpretations. 

Ad agency: Publicis, Hamburg