Creativity is not dead.

I probably don't do enough of this here at RoundSeventeen, after all I am a hired gun and should grease the skids and kiss a little ass more often, but today I am going to sing the praises of a new TV campaign.

Namely, three commercials for Tomcat Mouse Repellant.

Generally speaking, the bar for creativity for products designed to kill pests and vermin is admittedly low. Years ago, we pitched and won the Ortho Bug B Gon account for BBDO. The roach and flea and ant jokes just wrote themselves.

Nevertheless, this effort from Barton Graf 9000, the most oddly named ad agency in America, is worthy of our attention.

In very meta terms, it is absurdist theater turned into absurdist theater.

The production value is purposefully low. The USP (unique selling propositions, for you laymen) are forcefully delivered upfront. And the writing is simply inspired.

In other words, it goes about its business the way 99% of ad agencies don't go about theirs.

I can count on one hand the number of bosses that would have let this kind of work out the door. And frankly can't think of a single CEO who would've given it the green light.

"It's cheesy"

"It's silly."

"All the characters are dead."

Yes. Yes. And yes.

You can find these little gems on YouTube. For your convenience, I've embedded my favorite.

Why, you may ask, is this my favorite?

It's simple really. In this weird scenario, you have one dead mouse swinging a pointy mace and killing another mouse, who it should be noted, is already dead.

If that's not Cannes Gold, I don't know what is.