Fellini. Dali. Brakhage. And now, a director who simply goes by the name Coyote. He is the mad genius who may have fundamentally changed the way we look at advertising through deft use of metaphor, symbolism and experimental techniques. 

To truly appreciate the spot for Tylenol PM, titled More Than a Pillow, you must understand how drab advertising has been in the sleep-medicine category. We've all seen 'em: A cranky man twists and turns in bed, complaining to his wife that he can't sleep—dull enough to put us into a level-3 snooze. Tylenol, and its adventurous director Coyote, throws a Mazel Tov cocktail at this convention and creates something that's less of a 30-second ad and more a 30-second experimental film.

Shot in sparse, washed-out colors that recall the desperate, dark world of Ingmar Bergman, the spot begins darkly—bird's-eye of a sleepless woman inhaling a sigh of despair; cut to close-up of a man exhaling a similar sigh. Quite a clever way to link these two lost souls drifting down a dreadful river, and straight away our worlds are unhinged. Coyote uses the opportunity to pour on the symbolism in a subliminal, subversive style: A frying pan seemingly dipped in milk stands next to three glasses of milk; tattered books are propped up by an antiquated pair of glasses; a vintage bathtub sits naked, frothing over with bubbles. The audience is taken deep into the collective unconscious netherworld, teetering uncomfortably between waking life and dreamscape.

An acute example of marketing macabre, More Than a Pillow holds us hostage in this phantasmagoric outland until we beg for reprieve, and it comes in the form of two pills: Tylenol Rapid Release Gels. When these plopped into the actor's hand at :15, I found myself grabbing fruitlessly at the screen—like Tina in Nightmare on Elm Street, I desperately wanted something to deliver me from this ghoulish place.

Tylenol's been criticized for employing "avant-garde techniques" to "unnerve the public and create a fear-based need." To this I say bravo—it's one of very few ads that strikes you on a deep, unconsciously emotional level. Sure it's a scare tactic, but at the end of the day, everyone likes being scared. And now, a truly brilliant feature presentation: