Dacia’s latest advert is actually made at the kitchen table

In the latest of a string of adverts ingeniously created under lockdown restrictions, Publicis Poke has released a new short for car brand Dacia. Ultimately showing “you can do a lot with a little” (ringing true to Dacia being known as the best value car brand in the UK), the short begins as many a car advert does, with a vehicle down a lit motorway at night. As the camera angle widens out however, the viewer realises it’s actually a puppeteering act being made at the kitchen table.

Directed and produced by Gal Muggia and Vania Heymann and filmed at their flat in Tel Aviv, the equipment juggled by the two-person team includes three laptops, a drill, a record player, some bike lights and a 1:43 scale model of a Dacia Duster.

This jumble of products is used to simulate a usual car advert before revealing their true forms, “as laptop keyboards and people start coming into frame, we realise the car is not full size, but a scale model sat on top of one laptop screen playing a rolling road video with another laptop providing the backdrop for the illusion,” explains agency Publicis Poke. “As the camera pulls back further, we reveal the music isn’t simply a soundtrack but is being played in realtime by one of the video creators using glasses and bottles filled with water. Back further still we see that a carefully positioned hairdryer is creating the sound of the road and even the narration is being delivered in realtime via speakerphone.”

Although seemingly easily put together with household objects, the short took master planning to execute. As Dave Monk, creative director at Publicis Poke points out, “lockdown has put restrictions on the creative industries like never before, but constraints always bring out the most inventive thinking.” Utilising the restrictions which others may shy away from, Dave explains that the advert pinpoints Dacia as “a car brand that prides itself on its affordable ingenious engineering, so it made sense that the work we made was an affordable ingenious little production in itself.”