A commercial steals the show at the ITB 2007: In the international film competition for cities, regions and tourist organisations, “Das goldene Stadttor” (Golden City Gate), the advertising spot "The Welshman" received a special prize. Grafenstein had produced the film for this year’s spring advertising campaign on behalf of the Wales Tourist Office, Visit Wales. All in all, there were 95 nominations for entries from 33 different countries.

“This is a creative and funny spot, and even three days later, judges would still talk about the Welshman,” Wolfgang Jo Huschert, president of the Federal Association of film and AV producers and organiser of the competition, comments on the jury’s decision, further underlining the promotional effect of the film. The 30-second online advertisement purposely uses the wow effect on the viewer: Only the final seconds reveal that the narrator is, in fact, not the sheep appearing in a full shot but the shepherd standing next to it.

Since 2002, the event “Das goldene Stadttor” has taken place every year to coincide with the International Tourism Fair (ITB) in Berlin. It aims to promote films with a special audience appeal, which manage to convincingly portray the commercial and cultural aspects of a city, region or tourist-industry provider. The films entered in the competition are divided into seven categories and judged by a high-profile jury of international calibre. The main criteria for the judges are ‘visual performance’, ‘acoustic ensemble’, ‘emotional effect’, ‘information value’ and ‘conceptual design and creativity’.

The Welshman, specially produced for online viewing, can be seen in conjunction with two other advertising spots, the Iron Man and Time Management, on the websites of various travel media (e.g. Merian.de, Marcopolo.de) as well as on the Internet travel pages of many newspapers and magazines (e.g. Faz.net, Zeit.de, Brigitte.de) until the end of the campaign on 31 March 2007.

Click here to see the spot: „The Welshman“