Are you as sick of seeing animals in ad campaigns as I am?

Usually their presence in ads is completely irrelevant to the product or service they are selling, and generally they’re used as a ploy to distract you from how bad the product or service is.

Telus is apparently “unleashing” something new this week. Let me guess…a lion? Perhaps a tiger or maybe even a bear? Oh my. How original. While Telus’ animal theme is one of the most memorable campaigns in Canadian ad history, after 10 years of the cuteness I now find it all rather boring. It’s time for something new.

GoAuto? Same thing. We get it — dogs.

Fido? Ditto. Cute puppies. Very unique.

Playing off animals is such a played-out theme.

So I was pretty skeptical when I heard that AT&T was going to be jumping on the animal bandwagon. However, after seeing the ads I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised.

Using just hands and a phone, AT&T melds 2 popular ideas of painting hands, along with animals to make a moderately unique campaign. Not only do they incorporate beautiful colours and localization, but they maintain a unique style and inject the human element back into the animal theme. Yes! Humans!! Go figure. They’ve successfully put a new twist on the animal concept by making it relevant to the humans that use them, which in my opinion is pretty cool.