Fishy business

Sweden – E-commerce payment brand Klarna has created Smoooth ads to promote its seamless payment services. 

• Smoooth describes the overall feeling the brand wants its customers to have when they shop online
• Emotional impact is no longer something wishy washy and nice to have, but an essential for any brand

Traditionally, banking ads play it safe – roll out the Mondeo-man family, talk of flexible ISAs and our promise to you. All such shop talk is washed away in this tasty treat created by agency DDB Stockholm, in which a fish serenely dives down a slide, and glides across the floor.

To top it off there is a delightfully playful and mesmerising electronic soundtrack on a loop, specially composed by artist DeadMono, that suspends the viewer in a subaquatic trance. In tandem, Klarna released a video of a mouth-wateringly long piece of cheese being spliced in slow motion, and a hairy canine swimming through a pool of water.

‘We wanted them to feel a little strange and arty,’ the directors, the Perlorian Brothers, told Adweek. ‘So we searched all over the world for the best locations, the best props, the slipperiest fish, the smoothest cheese, the silkiest fur-covered sea creature.’