In the old joke on the subject, the punch line is ‘Because he can,’ but in MacLaren McCann’s ‘Dog’ for client Sony, the dog, umm…licks its testicles to make the audience cringe when he follows up with a slobber on his owner’s face as she lies on the grass listening to her Sony Discman in blissful ignorance.

‘I just interpreted the idea,’ says Mike Stafford of his sound design work – the single element that makes the concept so stomach-turning – on the spot, this year’s Top Spots choice for sound design.

Stafford got the spot, and its companion piece (a waitress sneezing loudly into a Discman-wearing diner’s meal just before he tucks in, completely unaware of his meal’s garnish) with no sound attached at all. And the sound of the lapping? ‘I created that myself. That’s me licking myself. I won’t say where – it’s a trade secret.’

That stomach-clenching sound was nailed in two takes. ‘I had something that I quite liked and the agency thought it was too gross so I redid it, so it took [a second] take,’ recalls Stafford.

‘The rest of the design took a long time, all the ambient sounds, like her head going back in the grass and the background city noises and birds, all those little subtle things that you shouldn’t be aware of, but that should make you feel like she’s in a certain environment. That’s where the work was – making it feel real. Footsteps, clothes rustling – recreating that is part of what gives it a reality that makes the whole situation more believable.’

Stafford, owner and president of Toronto’s Jungle Music and a specialist in television advertising, sees the unorthodox nature of the spot as typical of a new kind of approach.

‘I think it’s part of the new, young irreverent [sensibility] that’s going on. This is what dogs do; there’s nothing different about whether they do it at home or in an ad.’ *