Welcome to New York. Whether there’s a virus in town or not, it’s busy, with the noise of traffic, a preacher of doom, phone conversations and busy radios filling the air. Until clouds of soap suds start falling from the sky.

‘Future-friendly’ soap brand Method’s handsome advert resembles a kind of low-stakes disaster movie, as the streets are increasingly invaded with appealingly puffy clouds of clean – it’s not quite how Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle envisioned it, but it’s not too far off.

The soapocalypse is met with joy: New Yorkers smile, dance, clean and smooch to the soundtrack of Jarvis Cocker’s ‘Must I Evolve?’ – the chorus of which pointedly answers ‘yes yes yes yes’ to questions like ‘must I change?’. Method doesn’t lay the environmental message on too thick though, simply stating ‘make the good fight good fun’ over a shot of its colourful range.

Spectacular and subtle: superb.

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