Watch the full ad here:

Tom's thoughts:

"THE PERFECT TV AD?

To mark 70 years of TV advertising, ITV Media asked 70 people to choose their favourite ever TV commercial and say why it’s so special to them.

My pick is ‘Points of View’ for The Guardian from 1986 by John Webster and BMP DDB, directed by Paul Weiland.

Many have said before that it’s a perfect example of the art and craft of TV advertising. I think it’s this and a whole load more.

I first saw it aged sixteen at school in an English class, when we discussed and analysed it as if it were a poem or a painting. It made a huge impact on me. It was the first time I saw that advertising could be so much more than something you had to sit through in order to enjoy your favourite TV shows.

It showed advertising as something that could have an opinion, and that you could have an opinion about. That it could make you think and feel something (not just crassly tell you to go and buy something).

It sowed a seed for me that led to me applying for jobs in the industry (including BMP DDB rejecting me as a grad, but changing their POV on me twenty years later).

One of the problems when talking about it is that it looks so alien today. It’s nothing like anyone’s mental picture of what an ad ‘should’ look like. A teenager today would stare at you blankly if you showed it to them (I know, I’ve tried).

But forty years ago it looked nothing like an ad either. And that’s partly why it’s so great - almost none of the ‘greatest ever’ ads ever look like ads. They break the mould, push boundaries, pull you in by showing you something different.

It’s grainy, black & white, mostly silent, 3 shots, a black frame and the brand name. Forty years on it can feel quite ‘small’.

But what a truth, what an idea, what a story. What a piece of filmmaking. And what a perfect example of brand strategy - the whole thing is the perfect distillation of the Guardian’s brand.

In Sarah Carter and Les Binet’s book ‘How not to plan’ they recount how the Guardian Editor Peter Preston said it managed in 30 seconds to summarise everything the Guardian was about.

So it’s not just great filmmaking - it’s a perfect example of the enduring marriage of brand strategy, creativity, and execution.

It expresses a strategy so perfect that the same core idea of the importance of seeing the whole picture from different angles was at the heart of BBH’s great ‘Three Little Pigs’ film for the Guardian from 2012 when the paper was wrestling with how to deal with the rise of social media and citizen journalism.

And the same idea is at the heart of the Guardian’s first ever US brand campaign that launched last month featuring the line ‘The whole picture’, when the world of journalism faces a whole new crisis.

Guardian ‘Points of view’ is the perfect expression of an idea so true that it will remain important and valuable to the brand…forever. (Or at least for as long as The Guardian chooses to use it).

What’s your point of view? And what’s your favourite TV commercial of all time?"