2014 in Review with... Matt Fitch & Mark Lewis

BBH London creative team, Matt Fitch [above right] and Mark Lewis [above left] look forward to hoverboards and the continuing ascension of craft in advertising but also look back on the work that floated their collective boat over the last 12 months.

Do you think that 2014 has been a particularly good year for creative advertising?

It’s not been what you’d call a ‘vintage year’ to be honest.

What campaigns or pieces of work have stood out for you this year and why?

We really enjoyed the Gap spots David Fincher shot for W+K NY. Cool and stylish yet charming [Stairs, below].

We’ve seen all the Christmas campaigns now; which was your favourite and why?

We’re a little tired of the annual Christmas advertising battle. It's become the UK’s version of the Super Bowl, with every client clamouring for their own John Lewis-a-like.

The stand out this year has to be Ringan Ledwidge’s Sainsbury's film [below]. Like many people, we have a bit of an issue with a supermarket using a horrific war to flog stuff, but as a piece of film it's impressive. In fact it's too good. Ringan is officially too good for ads now.

Technologically speaking, this year seemed to be the year of Oculus Rift; would you agree and will it be even more prominent in 2015 and beyond?

Every year at BBH we have our very own digital expo called SXW1 (see what they did there?). This year, one of the gadgets we got to play with was Oculus Rift, which allowed us to take a journey up 'The Wall' from Game of Thrones.

Matt is afraid of heights and it was so convincing he almost shit himself. It's a very cool piece of tech and we can see it being used in film and immersive storytelling to great effect but we’ll have to wait and see if it can become a genuine means of communicating with consumers.

What achievement(s) are you personally most proud of from this year?

Probably our work for World Animal Protection. It felt good tackling an issue we really believe in and hopefully we’ve made at least a small difference by making tourists aware of the animal abuse that goes on behind the scenes of their holiday.

We're also proud of the fact that the campaign used Google Adwords in an innovative and, we think, original way. Big props to everyone in the team who helped make it happen.