In 1975, musician, producer and full-time thinker Brian Eno spearheaded a project designed to rouse slumbering musician types out of their creative ruts. Dubbed 'Oblique Strategies', the piece comprised a hundred or so flashcards, each of which contained a single sentence intended to upend the user's habitual creative process. Sample cards included commands like "Faced with a choice, do both", "Look at the order in which you do things" and "Don't be frightened to display your talents". This piece, for Sony Bravia, might well have been borne out of an oblique strategy that doesn't (but should) exist: "What would a seven-year-old do with these resources?"

Directed by MJZ's Nicolai Fuglsig, "Balls" depicts a small army colorful plastic balls bouncing down San Francisco's hilly residential streets in slow motion. Employing tens of thousands of plastic balls, all of which were flung down the streets using makeshift catapults, the piece has a childlike whimsy that feels gleefully out of step with the polished slickness that we're used to from Sony. And because Fuglsig opted to do everything in camera instead of in post, it has moments where it feels less like a commercial and more like a filmed piece of public art (a :150 version debuted at the Tate Gallery in September). Alive with color and movement, its a simple, evocative piece that also has the good sense to keep the product tie-in and the connect ("Sony Bravia - Colour like no other") subtle and unobtrusive. Testimony to the fact that a good idea sells itself.

View the spot: Balls (:60)

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