カネボウ化粧品 | I HOPE.希望の美容液／I HOPE.希望 | 2025
It's a Cosmetics Ad, But It's Not Selling Cosmetics / Kanebo "I HOPE. Hope"
It's a commercial for a serum, but it barely talks about skin at all. This is the 2025 chapter of the "hope" story that KANEBO has been telling for years.
The problem
Cosmetics ads tend to talk about "change." Wrinkles fading, skin brightening—words like these fill the market. But KANEBO has always faced a different direction.
The insight
The idea here is that maybe your feelings changing matters more than how you look changing—and that the feeling comes first. The notion of makeup as "preparation for becoming who you want to be" keeps running through this work.
The idea
They keep using the 1980 song "Kuchibiru yo, Atsuku Kimi wo Katare," with a diverse cast speaking about "hope" in their own words. Rather than explaining the product, it shows the very reason people put on makeup in the first place.
What happened
In 2025, it won the Grand Prix in the Film Craft category at the ACC TOKYO CREATIVITY AWARDS.
Afterthought
I love the nerve it takes to make your own product look like it's "not being sold" at all. Cosmetics are, in the end, supposed to be tools for changing how you look—yet this campaign turns that into a story about the inside, and just runs with it. Digging up the same song year after year without wavering—KANEBO has been betting on this approach for a long time.
Awards
- ACC Grand Prix 2025
