Describe an advertisement you remember well

I want to talk about an advertisement for a mobile company. I saw it few years ago on TV, during Ramadan, at my grandparents' house in Irbid. We were eating iftar, and in Jordan this is the time when everybody watch TV, so companies put their best adverts on that time. After that I saw it many times in Facebook and Instagram also.

The advert is about an old man who is living alone. His granddaughter study in another country and he misses her very much, but he can't use his smartphone. So he goes every day to a small shop and a young boy is teaching him how to do a video call. It's very funny because he always holds the phone upside down. In the end, in the last night of Ramadan, he calls his granddaughter and she is crying because she is so happy.

I remember this advert because at the time my brother just moved to Germany to study, and my mother was also learning how to use video calls. So it touched us very deep and everyone was crying a little bit. But the strange thing is I don't remember the name of the company. So maybe the advert was not very good for the company, I think.

I'm going to describe a TV advert for a mobile phone company that I saw a few years ago during Ramadan.

I saw it for the first time at my grandparents' house in Irbid while we were having iftar, the meal when we break our fast. That's when the most expensive adverts are shown, because basically the whole country is watching television at the same time. Later it was shared everywhere online, so I must have seen it twenty or thirty times.

In the advert, there's an old man who lives alone, and his granddaughter is studying in another country. He really misses her, but he has no idea how to use his new smartphone. So every day he goes to a small shop near his house, and a teenage boy who works there teaches him how to make video calls. It's quite funny, because he keeps holding the phone the wrong way up. At the end, on the last night of the Ramadan, he finally calls her, and she starts crying when she sees his face.

The reason I remember it so well is that my brother had moved to Germany to study just before it came out, and my mum was trying to learn video calling herself, so it felt very personal to us. To be honest, we all got quite emotional watching it. What's strange, though, is that I can't remember which company made it, so I'm not sure it was very successful as an advertisement.

The advert that's stayed with me longest was for a mobile phone network, and it ran on Jordanian television during Ramadan a few years ago.

I first saw it at my grandparents' house in Irbid, just as we were sitting down to break the fast, which is prime time for advertisers because every family in the country is in front of the television at the same moment. After that it was impossible to escape; it was all over social media for weeks.

The story itself was very simple. An elderly man, clearly a widower, is shown eating alone and staring at a photo of his granddaughter, who's studying somewhere abroad. He can barely use his smartphone, so he starts sneaking off to the corner shop, where a teenage boy patiently teaches him how to make a video call. There's a lovely running joke where he keeps holding the phone upside down. Then, on the last night of Ramadan, he calls her during iftar, she bursts into tears, and the final shot is just his face lighting up. I don't think the product was mentioned until the last three seconds.

I remember it partly because of timing. My older brother had just moved to Germany for his master's, and my mother had been struggling with exactly that kind of technology, so we all watched it with a lump in our throats. But the funny thing is that I genuinely couldn't tell you which network it was for. So in a sense it was a brilliant piece of storytelling and a complete failure as an advert, which I find quite fascinating.