Watch the full ad here:

Orlando's thoughts:

"One of the greatest ads of all time? Heineken’s The Water in Majorca (1985, Lowe-Howard-Spink).

From the campaign “Refreshes the parts that other beers cannot reach”, this ad proves that in advertising, it’s not just what you say - it’s how you say it.

Adrian Holmes drew inspiration from the famous Rain in Spain scene in My Fair Lady. He suggested to his creative partner Alan Waldie that it could be fun to invert the scene — a Sloane Ranger trying to master a Cockney accent, rather than the other way around. Alan immediately saw its potential for Heineken and they set to work. But a legal hurdle threatened to kill the idea: the estate of Sir George Bernard Shaw, author of Pygmalion (on which My Fair Lady was based) and a teetotaller, was unlikely to approve the use of the words from the scene.

What might have been a dead-end became a creative breakthrough. As Adrian recalls, their initial despair forced them to ‘think inside the box’.

The result:

“The water in Majorca don’t taste like what it oughta.”

Clever, culturally resonant, and perfectly in tune with the British holiday mindset of the 1980s and the decade of the Sloane Ranger. It turned legal restrictions - which Adrian has jokingly referred to as the “mothers-in-law of invention” - into a more inventive, memorable idea than they’d originally imagined.

The copy and art direction are genius (Holmes & Waldie), the direction exemplary (Paul Weiland), and the performances (Sylvestra Le Touzel and Bryan Pringle) impeccable. The voice, the intonation, the facial expression, indeed every glance, gesture and reaction shot all count.

The best ads bring about a psychological transformation in their audience. And that’s what this ad — and this campaign, through imaginative repetition — are all about.

The ad remains a masterclass - and is a reminder that creative constraints can often spark brilliance."