Beale's Best In Show: Volkswagen Golf (DDB)

There are all sorts of reasons why I shouldn't pick this ad as Best In Show this week. For starters, it's another car ad, like every other ad on television at the moment seems to be. Also, it's about using the product to make an interesting soundtrack, and there are a few too many of those ads around too.

This one though, by DDB for the VW Golf, is clever. The soundtrack is a mix of noises made from the experience of driving, from doors shutting to the laughs of the passengers to the strains of a man playing a guitar on the pavement.

The music was recorded and mixed by dance music supremo Paul Hartnoll from Orbital. He was at the ad shoot in South Africa to record all the noises so that genuine sounds from the shoot were used in the soundtrack. The film was directed by the music video director Scott Lyon.

The stop-start sound and film are mesmerically synched and edited with a razor, and the result is compulsive: further proof of the transformative power that an interesting soundtrack can have on commercial standout.