The Beautiful Word: Very Cool French Scrabble Commercials (Is That Ween I Hear?)

These are some super fantastic new Scrabble ads designed to liven up the game’s image a bit. Over the past 60′s years that it’s existed, Scrabble has sort taken on a reputation as a favorite of only English majors and elitist word geeks; so it looks like their trying to reach out to a wider audience. They get it, they’re “hip”. Also, is that Ween playing?

The concept of all the words on the board coming alive and interacting is great, but I’m not so sure everyone will “get it” at first. I mean, the people who already like Scrabble probably will, but the more mainstream people they’re trying to recruit, less likely. Still, I love this ad, and the other two in the series:

Ad Info:

Title: THE BEAUTIFUL WORD
Advertiser/Client: MATTEL
Product/Service: SCRABBLE
Agency: OGILVY & MATHER, Paris
Country: FRANCE

Credit Details:
Chris Garbutt Executive: Creative Director Ogilvy and Mather
Arnaud Vanhelle: Copy Writer Ogilvy and Mather
Benjamin Bregeault: Copy Writer Ogilvy and Mather
Mihnea Gheorghiu: Copy Writer
Antoaneta Metchanova: Art Director Ogilvy and Mather
Alex Daff: Art Director
Najin Ha: Art Director Ogilvy and Mather
Benoit de Fleurian: Managing Director Ogilvy and Mather
Marie-Charlotte Lafront: Group Director Ogilvy and Mather
Herve Parizot: President Mattel
Arnaud Roland Gosselin: Marketing Director Mattel

I only wish ads like these would play in the US.
My questions to you: Do people still buy board games in this digi-techno-online-quickness culture? And, seriously… is that Ween playing in the first video? It sounds just like them, and they’ve done commercials in the past. Remember the “Where’d the Cheese Go?” commercial for Pizza Hut? Ween did a version first, and was rejected. Check them out:
Where’d the Cheese Go?
and
Where’d the Cheese Go? (explicit)

Here’s a direct quote from Deaner about those two minisongs:
“Earlier in 2002 we were hired by the largest advertising firm in the country to write music for a Pizza Hut commercial. Pizza Hut had hired them to come up with a whole new image to promote their new Pizza, “The Insider” which had all the cheese inside the crust. In keeping in line with their new cutting edge image, the agency hired Ween to do the music, and we delivered in a big way. Unfortunately, they didn’t like a single piece of the 6 tunes we submitted and they had us rewriting the song every day for a couple of weeks before they hired someone else. In my opinion, it is one of the best tunes we wrote all last year.”

Update:
Here is a very cool (although completely unrelated) stop-motion animation commercial done for Scrabble’s 60th anniversary. This one is from a few months ago: