There aren’t many television commercials that could be considered memorable or even significant, but one commercial for the Shangri-La hotel chain in North America, Europe, the Asian Pacific, and the Middle East has completely changed the way people see video advertisements.
The ad spot is quite brilliantly done. It focuses on a single human man walking through the snowy woods, trying to find a place to rest and survive for the night. He seems to be stranded without many supplies, and he tries unsuccessfully to light matches for warmth. His flashlight battery dies, and he starts to give in to the cold. He eventually falls into the snow, completely unconscious and on his way toward hypothermia and death.
Moments later, a pack of wolves start to howl around the still man, and they slowly start to slink out from the woods one at a time. At first, the wolves seem threatening and hungry, but at the last moment, they change their tone. Instead of devouring the man, they seem to sense his struggle, and they surround him with their warm, furry bodies in order to keep him alive. The man eventually regains consciousness and realizes he is surrounded by wolves, but seeing they mean him no harm, he falls back asleep.
The idea behind the ad is that even strangers can be embraced as friends or family, which is exactly the message Shangri-La hotels wanted to convey. The commercial not only shows how the hotel wants to embrace anyone needing help or a place to rest their head, and it brings in elements of nature and man’s connection with it to strengthen that message.
