Cake

Cake is a television and cinema advertisement launched in 2007 by Škoda Auto to promote the new second-generation Fabia supermini car in the United Kingdom. The 60-second spot forms the centrepiece of an integrated advertising campaign comprising appearances on television, in cinemas, in newspapers and magazines, online, and through direct marketing. The campaign and its component parts were handled by the London branch of advertising agency Fallon Worldwide. Cake was directed by British director Chris Palmer. Production was contracted to Gorgeous Enterprises, with sound handled by Wave Studios. It premiered on British television on 17 May 2007. The campaign was a critical, popular, and financial success. It has been credited for the significant improvements in awareness and public opinion of the brand, and received honours from a number of advertising festivals and awards ceremonies, including several from the British Television Advertising Awards, the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, and the Creative Circle Awards. A "meaner" version of the advert was made to promote the vRS model of the Fabia. Sequence Cake opens on a baker cracking eggs into a mixing bowl to the opening strains of "My Favorite Things", performed by Julie Andrews. This begins a montage of shots of white-uniformed cooks moving trolleys of ingredients and performing cake preparation work such as zesting oranges and mechanically mixing cake batter. Several large blocks of madeira cake are taken from the oven, starting a time-lapse sequence of the brick-like cakes being arranged into a pile and being mortared with buttercream icing. After a shot of gloved hands kneading orange sugar paste, a woman pours melted chocolate into a pot of Rice Krispies. The sugar paste is pressed between rollers, and the pot of Rice Krispies emptied into a mould. Layers of Battenberg cake are mortared together with raspberry jam. The Rice Krispies are removed from the moulds and arranged as panels around the madeira structure, creating the rough outline of a car. Jelly mixture is poured into a mould while another cook attaches Fox's Glacier Mints to a fondant base to create a headlamp. Long lines of liquorice are wrapped as belts around pieces of a madeira engine. A tin of golden syrup is poured in place of lubricant. The engine is lowered into the front of the car while pastry chairs are lowered into the interior.