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キリン 午後の紅茶 | わたしらしいって、最強だ。夏 | 2019
This feels so now. Really now. Four high school girls from different schools and different backgrounds meet on social media and form a band. That kind of realness feels like it's bottled up the air of 2019.
Skittles | Romance | 2017
This is the 2017 version of Skittles' 30-second Super Bowl spot, from the brand known for "the finger thing." A boy keeps throwing candy at a window—looks like it's shaping up to be a romantic scene, but it's not just his girlfriend who ends up catching them. That reliable punchline strikes again.
カロリーメイト | My Way | 2020
The song and the sound effects here are just amazing. Listening to them yanks you straight back to that time in your life. Which tells you something: those sounds don't really exist (much) in the adult world.
日清食品 | HUNGRY DAYS | 2017
This teaser is too cute. Eisaku Kubonouchi's illustrations are too cute. The narration is too cute too.
Always | #LikeAGirl | 2014
When you ask a grown-up to "run like a girl," they flail their arms and legs around and laugh. But ask a girl who hasn't hit puberty yet, and she runs with everything she's got. That gap took my breath away.
Nescafe | The Dead Hour | 2017
Nobody listens to the radio at half past five in the morning. Nescafe in India zeroed in on exactly that "empty" hour.
Sprite | Pragnienie nie ma szans (Strip Poker) | 2005
Losing your clothes in a bottle cap contest? What's that all about?
KDDI | ポーター編 | 2001
This is from 2001, starring Etsushi Toyokawa and Ryo Kase. Even back in 2015 when I first wrote about this, I thought it "hasn't aged a bit," and watching it again now, it really still hasn't. The casting and everything else feels completely natural, with no sense of dating at all. I think that's one sign of a truly great piece of work.
CARREFOUR | ACT FOR FOOD | 2020
A supermarket broke the law, and ended up changing the law. And for that, it won the Grand Prix at Cannes. This is what it looks like when an ad actually moves society.
BOOST MOBILE | Boost Your Voice | 2017
During the 2016 US presidential election, a Boost Mobile phone store became an actual polling place. It was the first time ever that a private company's store became an official polling location. The campaign was serious enough, in a not-even-a-little-funny way, that it won multiple Grand Prix at Cannes.
NESTLE | KIT KAT MAIL | 2009
Putting a chocolate bar straight into a mailbox. Who would have thought that could happen? But it did — and it became the day that idea won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
LUSTUCRU | LA PREUVE PAR L'OEUF | 1964
France, 1964. The pasta brand LUSTUCRU released an ad titled "Proof by the egg." Instead of just saying their pasta used fresh eggs, they set out to show it honestly, and with humor, through film.
VOLVO | LIFE ON BOARD PROJECT | 2005
In 2005, Volvo made a car ad that stopped talking about cars. Just by letting people talk about their lives, it became the first ad ever to win a Titanium Lion at Cannes.
GUINNESS | BLACK POT | 1976
This Guinness ad won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1976. It seems to pair two quiet moments: a player sinking the black ball in snooker, and someone slowly drinking down a Guinness. "Slowly putting away the black" — both are about putting away something black, and neither should be rushed.
THE SEVEN-UP COMPANY | UN STORY | 1972
A 1972 TV commercial for 7-Up, titled "UN STORY." Back then, psychedelic billboards lined America's highways, and "Uncola" had become a catchphrase among young people.
MILKO | MUSIC MACHINE | 2001
Back in 2000, the web was still a quiet place. Most campaign sites were static HTML pages, and banners were just animated GIFs. Into that world, the Swedish dairy brand MILKO let loose a dancing cow.
BERGEN INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL BRAND CAMPAIGN | Brand Campaign | 2014
A festival logo built out of "music". And it went on to win the Grand Prix at Cannes. This is the story of Norway's Bergen International Festival, from 2014.
MERCADO LIVRE | FEED PARADE | 2020
In 2020, the world's biggest pride parade disappeared. The 2.5km road that 5 million people were supposed to walk was completely wiped out by the pandemic. Brazil's GUT rebuilt that road on Instagram, using 279 photos.
Coca-Cola | 2024
Coca-Cola's logo, drawn in the shape of a crushed can. A campaign that boldly crushed the logo everyone assumes is untouchable won the Grand Prix in the Print & Publishing category at Cannes Lions 2024.
DECATHLON | THE BREAKAWAY | 2022
Six inmates at a maximum-security prison in Belgium go cycling in a virtual space with people from the outside world. That single sentence was enough to move me.
PLAYSTATION 2 | Fun, Anyone? | 2004
Not a single second of gameplay footage appears. And yet I've never seen an ad that feels this much like a game. In Brazil, 1,500 people built a human mountain, climbing it over and over, only to be knocked down again and again. At the end, just one line appears: "Fun, Anyone?"
JOHN HANCOCK FINANCIAL SERVICES | Real Life, Real Answers | 1986
Cannes, 1986. The moment director Joe Pytka stepped onto the stage, the room erupted in a roar of boos. This ad, which had just won the Grand Prix, wasn't welcomed by the French audience. "This kind of reality doesn't belong in advertising," they seemed to say. But that was exactly the point of this campaign.
MAGGI | OPÉRA BŒUF | 1957
1957. This is a MAGGI pot-au-feu ad where cattle sing and dance in the style of an opéra bouffe (comic opera). The moment I saw the title, I tilted my head and thought, "Beef opera?"—but once I watched the video, it all made sense. For an ad of its time, this is wildly bold.
LEGO | KIPPER | 1981
LEGO, 1981. A mouse turns into a dog, a cat turns into a dragon, a submarine turns into an elephant. For 45 seconds, every time the bricks get rearranged, something new appears.
TINDER | SWIPE NIGHT | 2020
Three hours left until the end of the world. Open Tinder, and a first-person end-of-days drama begins. You're forced to swipe a choice within seven seconds, and that choice changes not just the story, but who you match with.
DIESEL | LITTLE ROCK | 1997
A western hero gets shot dead by the villain. And the ad uses that to talk about "success." This is the piece that won DIESEL and PARADISET DDB the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1997.
DOVE | Real Beauty Redefined for the AI Era | 2025
20 years ago, Dove fought against the idea of "beauty" in advertising. This time, the enemy is AI. The "beautiful women" that generative AI spits out turned out to be the same narrow, mostly white, thin ideal all over again. What Dove did this time wasn't complain—it was re-educate the algorithm.
TELENOR | NAMING THE INVISIBLE PAKISTANIS | 2020
In Pakistan, 60 million children had no birth certificate. Without one, they couldn't get medical care or go to school — children the country essentially didn't recognize as existing. What changed that was an app that took just 10 minutes to use. At the 2021 Cannes Lions, it won Grand Prix in two categories, a first for Pakistan.
LACOSTE | CROCODILE INSIDE | 2020
Two people are fighting. Their words get so fierce that the building actually splits in two. In the end, she leaps over the rubble to come back to him. Honestly, this feels like a movie.
CHEETOS | CAN'T TOUCH THIS | 2020
A guy holds up his fingers and says "Can't touch this~" as an excuse, and MC Hammer bursts out from behind him. Wrapped up in a rolled carpet, popping up as a baby's face, climbing out of a picnic basket. It's completely absurd, but that chaos is exactly the strategy behind selling a new product during the Super Bowl.
NIKE | TAG (Play campaign) | 2002
In a subway station, a man being chased dives onto a train. The doors close right on his pursuer's arm, just out of reach. Before you know it, the whole city seems to be caught up in one game of tag.
BING/JAY-Z | DECODE JAY-Z | 2011
In 2010, Bing was completely overshadowed by Google when it pulled off one of the biggest treasure hunts ever, scattering over 300 pages of Jay-Z's memoir across the globe. And the way they "scattered" them was wild: not just billboards, but the bottom of a pool in Miami, a burger wrapper, the lining of a Gucci jacket, a bronze plaque embedded in a Brooklyn housing project, a rooftop in New Orleans, even a pool table at the 40/40 Club.
NOT IMPOSSIBLE LABS | PROJECT DANIEL | 2014
A 14-year-old boy who'd lost both arms said he'd rather be dead than become a burden to his family. A video producer who read that article flew to Sudan carrying a 3D printer, with no medical knowledge at all.
NETFLIX | 人間まるだし。 | 2020
The narration opens with a sarcastic line: "What a beautiful age we live in." In 2019, when everyone was burning with "correctness," Netflix brought out The Naked Director and declared, flat out, "Human, Exposed." The moment Shibuya turned entirely red, you could feel just how powerful this ad was.
大塚製薬 | カロリーメイト 見えないもの篇 | 2021
2020 was a year when everyone fought an invisible virus. And CALORIEMATE still delivered its usual commercial to that year's students taking entrance exams. But things didn't go as usual. Remote classes, disinfectant, acrylic partitions, cancelled competitions. The moment Naotaro Moriyama's "Sakura" started playing, the tears wouldn't stop.
LOEWE | LOEWE x Suna Fujita | 2024
A husband-and-wife pottery studio in a small town in Kyoto, and LOEWE, the Spanish luxury brand. This pairing won the first-ever Grand Prix in the Luxury & Lifestyle category in Cannes Lions history.
CHIPOTLE | Back to the Start | 2012
For 2 minutes and 20 seconds, it just talks about farms. No burritos, no smiling staff, not even the product name shows up. For a fast food ad, that's incredibly strange. And yet it ended up winning two Grand Prix at Cannes.
GENERAL MOTORS | MAGIC RIDE | 1961
1961. An ad where you can't actually see the car — and it won a Clio.
NYT VR | THE DISPLACED | 2016
The New York Times tucked one million Google Cardboard viewers into copies of its Sunday paper. Inside was an 11-minute VR documentary called "THE DISPLACED." Readers who opened it up found themselves standing right in the middle of a refugee camp. The following year, it won two Grand Prix at Cannes.
THE BLAZE | TERRITORY | 2017
In the first 30 seconds, a man just keeps crying. He tries to hold back the tears, but they spill over, his family wraps him in a hug, and he can't stop anymore. This five-minute music video, built from just 22 shots, won the Grand Prix in the Film Craft category at Cannes Lions 2017.
BEST BUY | TWELPFORCE | 2010
This is the story of the day something that wasn't an advertisement won the Grand Prix at Cannes. I watched the moment customer service turned into advertising.
LEVI | WALKING BEHINDS | 1972
1972. The year the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions went to a Levi's ad that showed nothing but people walking away from the camera. The title says it all: "WALKING BEHINDS." Walking figures, seen from behind. The fact that someone had this bold a point of view over 50 years ago is amazing.
VOLKSWAGEN | KAFERKILLER | 1970
This is VW's piece that won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions in 1970. The title is "KAFERKILLER." Käfer is German for beetle, meaning the Beetle. Killer means, well, killer. I've always been curious what an ad looked like where VW declared it was "killing" its own icon.
WENDY’S | Keeping Fortnite Fresh | 2019
A fast food chain spent nine hours destroying freezers inside Fortnite, and the game's developer ended up removing freezers from the game entirely. This stunt beat Nike's "Dream Crazy" to win the very first Grand Prix in the Social & Influencer category at Cannes Lions.
HEINZ | IT HAS TO BE HEINZ | 2024
Ask an AI to draw ketchup, and a Heinz bottle shows up on its own. Ask a person, same result. Behind the scenes at restaurants, fake ketchup gets refilled into Heinz bottles. The work that spent five years collecting proof of this blindingly obvious fact won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix at Cannes in 2024.
IKEA | THISABLES | 2019
Don't change the furniture—just add a part. That was all it took.
REDDIT | Superb Owl | 2020
For five seconds, text just appears on screen. You can't read it. But that was the most talked-about ad at the 2021 Super Bowl. Reddit's own line, "Wow, this actually worked," turned out to be exactly right.
SWEDISH INSTITUTE AND VISIT SWEDEN | CURATORS OF SWEDEN | 2012
Handing the country's official Twitter account to a different ordinary citizen every week. No checking what they tweet. That's the bet Sweden made.