In 2016, Visa brought Impossible Deals to the Dubai Shopping Festival for the first time. More than 100,000 people signed up for the deals and millions of people viewed our online ads. For 2017, we had a target to increase registrations by at least 25%. We knew Visa’s deals were impossible to resist but it was equally impossible to get people to sit through an ad long enough when these ads were just getting in the way of their cat videos, their morning radio shows, and their movies.

The film starts with copy on screen that reads, “Impossible strikes again this DSF” with sub-copy that reads “Sign up at visamiddleeast.com/dsf”. A calm, soothing announcer talks over the static frame saying, “Visa’s impossible deals are so good, they don’t need an ad.” All this happens within the first five seconds of the ad which is unskippable on YouTube. The announcer continues, “And now, a bunch of kittens asking for some affection.” As he says this, the film cuts to a litter of cute kittens. Relaxing music plays in the background as we watch the kittens on screen. The announcer says “you can skip now”.. The announcer then continues to narrate humorously the kitten scene unfolding for the remainder of the 60 seconds of the ad whilst subtly enticing, at intervals, the viewer to sign up for Visa’s impossible deals. The ad ends on a Visa logo with

Visa’s deals would be impossible to resist but it was also impossible to get people to sit through an ad long enough for us to tell them that. They just wanted to hit the skip button and get to their cute animal videos. So, we made a cute kitten video so they didn’t have to.

In exchange for letting a deep, soothing voice talk them into signing up for Visa’s impossible deals, Visa gave them 60 seconds of kitty cuteness, which they didn’t seem to mind nor skip.

The 65-second film ran on YouTube as a skippable pre-roll ad prior to the start of the Dubai Shopping Festival on December 20th, 2016 and until the end of the festival on January 28th, 2017.