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SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE | Play It Safe | 2024
This isn't an ad for condoms. It's a movie made for the Sydney Opera House's 50th anniversary. The title is "Play It Safe," and the lyrics Tim Minchin sings are all about "don't take risks, let's play it safe" — yet the footage thoroughly celebrates "dangerous creativity." That irony works incredibly well.
CHEVROLET | STATION WAGON | 1959
It's 1959. This is the year Chevrolet's station wagons hit American roads with cat's-eye taillights and tailfins that looked like wings. The ad film, made by Campbell-Ewald, reportedly won a GRAND PRIX.
AP PUBLIC COMPANY LIMITED | The Unusual Football Field | 2017
The assumption that soccer fields have to be rectangular gets broken here with an L-shape and a zigzag. In Khlong Toei, a densely packed slum area in Bangkok, a real estate developer built soccer pitches in oddly shaped lots. The moment you see it, you think "oh, this actually works" — that's how strong the idea is.
BURGER KING | Google Home of The Whopper | 2017
A single 15-second ad caused chaos in living rooms around the world just hours after it aired. The moment the employee on screen said "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?", viewers' Google Home devices started talking back on their own. Google was furious, Wikipedia got hit hard, and public opinion split right down the middle. The result: the Grand Prix in the Direct category at Cannes Lions. Nobody had seen anything like it before.
Coca-Cola | 2024
In bodegas and small shops around the world, owners have been painting their own versions of the Coca-Cola logo. Instead of telling them to fix it, the brand officially celebrated it.
PERNOD RICARD | THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT | 2020
Have you ever calculated how many days you actually have left with someone you love? It's not a reality anyone wants to know. But Ruavieja turned it into a number using an algorithm—and ended up changing people's behavior in the process.
Magnum Ice Cream | 2024
Selling ice cream in the dead of winter. Magnum and LOLA Madrid took on that uphill battle—and came home with a Grand Prix from Cannes.
Cathay Pacific | Back to Kai Tak | 2026
Kai Tak Airport closed in 1998. It was known as the world's toughest landing, with planes banking 47 degrees between high-rise buildings before touching down. Twenty-seven years later, Cathay Pacific flew that sky once more. This time, though, it wasn't a landing — it was a flypast.
Apple TV+ | Severance Grand Central Activation | 2025
In January 2025, a glass box appeared at Grand Central Terminal. Inside were the cast of Severance. Right in the middle of rush-hour commuting, the show's office had suddenly materialized in real life.
Virgin Media O2 | Daisy vs Scammers | 2025
Meet Daisy, a 78-year-old AI grandma built for one job only: keeping scammers on the line as long as possible. She loves knitting, talking about her cat, and never, ever hanging up.
Snack Jack Ring | Mother Strike | 2026
A mother steps straight into her son's video game. Just that premise alone makes you want to watch. This film from Thailand pulls it off well, layering the story of a family finding its way back into the same circle over the round shape of the snack itself.
THE PERES CENTER FOR PEACE | Blood Relations | 2012
Enemies, sharing each other's blood.
TRANSPORT ACCIDENT COMMISSION | 10 KPH LESS | 1998
A speed-reduction ad released in 1997 by Australia's TAC. It shows, without flinching, a car hitting a person at 70 km/h.
LIGA CONTRA EL CANCER | Shadow WiFi | 2015
On a beach in Peru stands a big blue wall. Get close, and your phone picks up WiFi on its own. But the signal only reaches inside the shadow the wall creates.
RESPIRATORY APP | Alvio | 2014
Kids with asthma hate breathing exercises. But what if your breath itself became the controller for a game? Alvio made a game where a pufferfish swims just by you breathing in and out.
JORDAN BRAND | A/R JORDAN | 2018
That dunk Jordan made in 1988 — you could summon it through your phone's camera on Snapchat. And you could buy the shoes right there on the spot, with delivery the same day. In 2018, one brand built that kind of experience.
HERTOG JAN | DON'T DRINK HERTOG JAN | 2025
A beer brand telling people "don't drink." On paper, that sounds like career suicide. But it's exactly what put this brand at the top of the Dutch market.
SAVE THE CHILDREN & SANTILLANA | Paper Glasses | 2016
You open your textbook, and there's a pair of glasses waiting for you. They're made of paper, and they can even test your eyesight. It's so simple it's almost moving.
MCDONALD’S | WINTER TAKES ON COLORS | 2025
A McDonald's restaurant turned into one giant coloring book. What happens when you hand customers the power to add color during Poland's long winter?
NTT DOCOMO | XYLOPHONE (森の木琴) | 2011
44 meters long, built on a forest slope. A giant wooden xylophone playing Bach's Cantata No. 147. No CGI, no sound added afterward, just wooden balls rolling down and down. And yet people all over the world held their breath watching it. This is what simple really means.
パナソニック | Make New | 2022
When a girl touches a piece of fabric, a cold, lifeless blue world instantly transforms into one overflowing with green. This reversal was actually filmed by flipping the entire set and everyone in it completely upside down.
MASTERCARD | Roadside Market | 2020
On Romania's rural roads, you'll find farmers sitting with homemade vegetables and cheese laid out for sale. They're not on any map, and they can only take cash. A business that doesn't officially exist.
THE LOTUS LIGHT CHARITY SOCIETY | UMBRELLA BAGS | 2010
In 2010, a print ad from Hong Kong reached the world. A charity message built around umbrella bags.
MINISTRY OF TOURISM GOVT. OF INDIA | THE HINGLISH PROJECT | 2012
In India, mixing Hindi and English together into "Hinglish" is just a normal part of how people talk. So someone decided to turn that into a font.
SICKKIDS FOUNDATION | THE COUNT | 2025
It's a film celebrating a 150th anniversary, but what you see isn't the hospital's history—it's kids running with everything they've got. What's being celebrated isn't the past, it's the next birthday.
AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR DEAF CHILDREN | Fingerspelling with Machine Learning | 2020
In the United States, 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 babies are born deaf. 9 out of 10 of them are born to hearing parents. In many cases, that child becomes the first deaf person their parents have ever known.
NYNEX | Human Cartoons | 1988
In 1988, how do you make a "boring free product" like the phone book interesting? TBWA CHIAT/DAY's answer was a visual riddle.
ACKO | TAILOR TEST | 2025
An Indian tailor finds the risk of heart disease with nothing but a measuring tape. He measures your waist and hips, and if something seems off, he quietly stamps the bill. On the stamp is a phone number for a free checkup. This is what an insurance company did before it ever tried to sell insurance.
APPEALNOW.COM | KICKING | 2005
Released in the UK in 2005, this shocking video shows a parking warden suddenly tackling a passerby, pinning him to the ground, and finally kicking him. It became a talked-about viral ad that was both darkly funny and full of anger at unfair parking tickets.
THE LINCOLN MOTOR COMPANY | HELLO AGAIN | 2013
A brand that had been around for 90 years decided to shed 90 years of being "your dad's car." The password was "Hello, Again." Nice to meet you, once more.
NIKE | BEAUTIFUL | 2000
This NIKE ad is from 2000. The title is "BEAUTIFUL." Somehow, that title alone already tells you something.
IKEA | HIDDEN TAGS | 2025
IKEA furniture has a hidden tag that disappears once it's assembled. On it: the manufacturing date. From that one fact alone, IKEA pulled off a treasure hunt that got all of Portugal involved.
MARCH FOR OUR LIVES PARKLAND STUDENTS | Price on Our Lives | 2018
$1.05. That's the total amount Senator Marco Rubio received from the NRA, divided by the total number of students in Florida. It's the orange price tag that survivors of the Parkland high school shooting wore as the "price" of their own lives. The campaign generated 826 media placements and 2.2 billion media impressions, and through the power of math, anger, and design, it irreversibly changed the gun control debate in America.
BRBR | HEROES OF TODAY | 2019
The screen is black and white: Berlin, 1936. A Black athlete walks down a street hung with swastikas. People passing by turn to stare and whisper, and even a child hurls a slur at him. Then, just as he steps into the stadium, it hits you — wait, this is a tweet from today.
Levi's | COLORS & Tight Fit Jeans | 2017
It's only 30 seconds, but somehow you can't look away. Jennifer Love Hewitt dances in Levi's commercial, made exclusively for Japan.
GOOGLE | Timelapse in Google Earth | 2020
Gathering 24 million satellite photos, this project let anyone, for free, fast-forward through how the Earth has changed from 1984 to 2020. Just type in a place name in the search bar, and you can watch your own hometown transform over 37 years.
PASCALL | WHEN WILL THE FRUIT BURST | 2009
A giant strawberry-shaped balloon slowly, slowly inflates in the middle of the city. Right beside it, a needle stands ready and waiting. Nobody knows when it will burst. The only thing that's certain is that when it does, thousands of fruit candies will rain down on the street.
ETERNA CADENCIA | THE BOOK THAT CAN'T WAIT | 2012
There's a book that starts erasing itself the moment you open it. Printed with a special ink that fades after a few months of exposure to light and air, this is a book you simply have to read.
ROAD SAFETY AWARENESS CAMPAIGN | SAFE & SOUND MUSIC PLAYER | 2016
For people who love walking while listening to music, there's an app built with one simple wish: that they stay alive.
BMW | THE KINETIC SCULPTURE FOR THE BMW MUSEUM | 2009
At the entrance of the BMW Museum, 714 metal spheres hang in mid-air. At first it looks like nothing at all. But wait seven minutes, and the shape of a car appears.
HOLLYWOOD VIDEO | DON | 1999
That movie-trailer voice crawls out from under the counter at a video rental store. One ad from Hollywood Video, 1999.
DEUTSCHE AIDS-STIFTUNG | EVERY 18 SECONDS SOMEBODY DIES OF AIDS. | 2012
Eighteen seconds. That's how often someone, somewhere in the world, dies of AIDS. As a number, it's almost too short. And almost too heavy to bear.
SMIRNOFF | MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE | 1993
In 1993, a Smirnoff bottle bent the world out of shape. Look through it, and piano keys turn into penguins, an old man turns into a walrus, a brooch turns into something else entirely. Surreal, witty, and a little unsettling all at once. This "through the bottle" idea became one of the defining images of Smirnoff in the 90s.
AUDI | PROCON 10 | 1987
It was 1987, a time when airbags were still expensive and no one could be totally sure they'd actually work when it mattered. Audi chose a different way to protect lives—not with electronics, but with plain physics.
KRAFT | LEGAL-ADE | 2019
A kid opens a lemonade stand, and the police shut it down. In America, this isn't an urban legend. It actually happens.
NETFLIX | Spanish Lessons | 2017
Scrolling through Twitter, they noticed fans all tweeting the same thing: "Watching Narcos is teaching me Spanish." So they thought — let's actually turn that into a lesson.
BURNING HEART RECORDS | MILLENCOLIN BATTLE | 2002
In 2002, putting a CD into your computer launched a game. Looking closer, I was stunned. This was basically Guitar Hero, three years before Guitar Hero existed.
COCA-COLA | Polar Bowl | 2012
On Super Bowl night, more than 700,000 people watched polar bears instead of the actual game. Isn't that wild?