879 articles · page 9 of 19
セキスイハイム | かみさま | 2015
"When will the Tokai earthquake actually hit... what year, what month, what day! God, please tell us!" It's the kind of question anyone living in the Tokai region has probably wondered about at some point—and this ad turns it into a full-blown comedy sketch. And somehow, the product being sold is houses.
キングソフト | WPS Cloud「働き方を自由にする」篇 | 2022
A man with two faces: special agent and office worker. While carrying out a mission to rescue a hostage from a burning, collapsing building, he gets a call from a coworker at his IT company, and right there on the spot he finishes editing a document using WPS Cloud. The sheer amount packed into 30 seconds is incredible.
サントリー | BOSS セブン 世界を敵に篇 | 1999
This ad is from 1999. Watching it again, you can't help wondering what Uno Kanda is up to these days — but more than that, this commercial takes nitpicking to an almost legendary scale and turns it into pure entertainment.
ACジャパン（公共広告機構） | IMAGINATION／WHALE（黒い絵） | 2016
Almost the entire film is made up of footage that leaves you feeling uneasy, and then, right at the very end, your whole perspective flips. It feels like watching a team on the verge of a crushing defeat suddenly turn the game around with one stunningly brilliant move. This is a masterpiece that hasn't aged a bit—if anything, it feels like it's only grown heavier with time.
コンタクトのアイシティ | 透明人間 | 1999
In 1999, an ad with absolutely wild energy hit Japanese TV. It's 60 seconds of glasses-wearing guys who get their hands on an invisibility drug and go streaking through the city, completely naked. There's a suppository, floating glasses, and more ridiculous details than you can count — yet somehow it's hilarious, and somehow it makes perfect sense. A true classic.
Apple | Someday At Christmas | 2015
90 seconds just isn't enough. Honestly, I wish I could watch and listen to this for three hours straight. At this point, it's gone beyond what you'd normally call a commercial.
NIKE | JASARI (NIKEiD) - If you were a boy | 2015
Made in Japan, but you'd never guess it. A spot that's NIKE through and through.
日清食品 | カップヌードル麻婆・五目 | 1995
The second you hear "asabaa," your brain just goes "huh?" A female employee misreads "mapo" as "asabaa," confidently adds that it comes with a refined grandma, her boss explodes in anger, and reality snaps back. All packed into just 15 seconds.
Skittles | Touch the Rainbow | 2009
In 2009, Skittles had viewers press their finger right onto their computer screen. That finger then became part of the video itself — turning into a tightrope, or a boxer's opponent.
Aviation Gin | Arlene's Big Leap | 2020
Arlene was born on 2/29/1936, making her 84 this year. But since her birthday only comes once every four years, 2/29/2020 was finally her "21st" birthday. Technically speaking, that makes this the first legal drink of her life.
日経電子版 | 見えてきた？ | 2019
Nikkei Digital Edition's "Did You See It?" series started in 2019, and it became a talking point for actor Sho Kiyohara's mysterious, repeated line "Ah, I see." This flea market app installment is a 15-second spot where a guy glances over at his girlfriend using a flea market app and, somehow, only he ends up nodding and saying "Ah, I see." Some have praised it for capturing something very relatable about young women today, but honestly, it wasn't easy to tell exactly what he was supposed to be "getting."
旭化成ホームズ | 考えよう。答はある。 | 2011
This copy opens with a quiet, measured voice: "I know that if I go further out, I could have a bit more land. But still, I think I'll live in the city." I find myself stopping on these words again and again.
Harvey Nichols | Shoplifters | 2017
Security camera footage became the ad itself, and it won the Grand Prix at Cannes. And the ones doing the filming? Actual shoplifters.
JR東日本 | Apple PayのSuica | 2017
Spring, new beginnings. That whole business of standing in line at the ticket counter to buy a commuter pass disappears, with just an iPhone. That's really all there is to it, but something about Ryuhei Matsuda's presence, the visuals, and the sound makes it strangely pleasant.
WHAT3WORDS | 3 WORDS TO ADDRESS THE WORLD | 2015
It's not an ad. But it won the Grand Prix at Cannes. In 2015, Nick Law, president of the Innovation jury, called it "the best body of work I've ever seen." That product was what3words.
DIESEL | HEIDIES 15 MB OF FAME | 2007
In 2007, if you opened diesel.com, instead of the usual homepage you saw a hotel room. Two women were holding an employee hostage, shouting that they wanted to be famous. This went on for five days.
日清食品 | 匂わせたい | 2020
A man's shoulder caught in the edge of a glass. Matching shoes. A poem you read vertically that spells out "I'm with the winning team." Ugh, another hint-dropping girl on social media, you think, getting a little annoyed. But that annoyance turns into pure delight by the end.
VINS DU POSTILLON | SERIE ROUGE | 1955
In 1955, this French brand became the very first winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. The first glory of its kind. And yet, almost no details about it remain.
CHEVROLET | CORVAIR OLYMPICS | 1960
In 1960, Chevrolet was the challenger. Into a compact car market dominated by the Volkswagen Beetle, they threw a punch with the Corvair's revolutionary rear-engine, air-cooled design. The launch campaign was named "OLYMPICS," and it reportedly won a Grand Prix.
NIKE | SKATEBOARDING | 1998
Skate through the city and a security guard comes running. Try a trick in front of a shop and someone starts yelling. In 1998, that was just normal life for skateboarders. Nike's response was a single question: "What if other athletes got treated the same way?"
CHLORODONT TOOTHPASTE | IL CIRCO | 1954
In 1954, at the first advertising film festival held in Venice, this piece rose to the top of 187 entries. At this festival, which would later become Cannes Lions, "Il Circo" won the very first Grand Prix.
BARCLAYS BANK | Put Una Money For There | 1956
This is the first British ad to win the Grand Prix at Cannes, back in 1956. It's called "Put Una Money For There." It's a three-minute animated ad built around a calypso sung in pidgin English (simplified English), urging West African farmers to "put the money from your harvest into Barclays Bank." Ba-ba-ba-boom. That tune is impossible to shake, and when you remember this was 1956, it's pretty wild.
PENGUIN BOOKS | Portuguese (Re)Constitution | 2022
Portugal's first-ever Cannes Lions Grand Prix. And it won out of 1,058 entries. The moment I watched the video, I knew this was a win that had to happen. The sheer intensity of watching a blue pencil cover over the constitution, page by page, is something else.
PGLANG | WE CRY TOGETHER | 2023
A six-minute film that won the Grand Prix in Film Craft at Cannes in 2023. Kendrick Lamar and Taylour Paige play a couple in a brutal argument. It was shot in a single take, with live vocals, in March 2020. The intensity makes you forget to breathe the whole time you're watching. This is less an "ad" than a "work" — but at the same time, it's also the piece that showed the world the overwhelming filmmaking craft of pgLang, the creative company Kendrick and his partner Dave Free launched in 2020.
NIKE | PAPER BATTLEFIELD | 2009
This campaign won the Grand Prix in the Design category at Cannes in 2009, and even looking at it now, it's absolutely thrilling. Using silkscreen printing, a technique that goes back to the 10th century, the players themselves made their own posters. That process itself embodied the very essence of competition.
IGGY POP & ORCON BROADBAND | Together Incredible | 2010
In 2010, Orcon, a small internet provider in New Zealand, connected punk icon Iggy Pop with nine amateur musicians from around the country over ordinary home broadband to re-record "The Passenger." This wonderfully absurd product demo won the Grand Prix in the Direct category at Cannes Lions.
VIATRIS | MAKE LOVE LAST | 2025
This is a condom ad—actually, no, it's an ad for Viagra. And it doesn't even look like an ad. In China, you can't advertise medicine directly, so this piece was released into the world as a work of "art."
TOYOTA | IQ FONT | 2010
A car writes letters with its tire tracks. And then those letters become an actual downloadable font. Launched from Belgium out to the world in 2010, this project showed people something they'd never seen before.
CHIPOTLE | CULTIVATE CAMPAIGN (Back to the Start) | 2012
A fast food chain made an animated short attacking factory farming. The product never once appears on screen. And it still won two Grand Prix at Cannes. That's almost too bold to believe.
LYNX | LYNXjet | 2006
In 2005, a brand-new airline appeared in Australia. Underneath it all, it was really an ad for deodorant. But they built it so seriously that real flight attendants from an actual airline ended up striking over it.
APPLE | THE GREATEST | 2023
Seven people with disabilities drive a car, check the color of their clothes, and just go about their day, all using iPhone. That's it, that's the whole film. And it swept the Emmys, the Cannes Grand Prix, D&AD, and One Club Best in Show. The amazing part isn't the advertising. It's the people in it.
UNIQLO | UNIQLOCK | 2008
In 2007, the clock that kept more people awake than any other was born. UNIQLOCK is a blog widget that marks time with music and dance. Once you stick it on the side of your blog, you'll find yourself watching the five-second changes for ten minutes before you know it.
BECO | #STEALOURSTAFF | 2020
"Please steal our staff." BECO printed résumés right on their bottles and put them on the shelves of major supermarkets. Getting poached is usually every company's nightmare—but BECO made it happen on purpose.
GOOGLE, GE, MINI, NEW YORK TIMES | NYT VR | 2016
A million pieces of cardboard were delivered along with the newspaper. Inside was Google Cardboard. In 2016, the New York Times used it to turn the newspaper business upside down.
OVERSEAS TELEPHONE CALLS | YUGOSLAVIA | 1977
1977. An international phone service in Australia used the voices of immigrants from Yugoslavia, and won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
TVE | SCOOTER | 1989
1989. Spain's state broadcaster TVE said something about itself: "Our shows are great, but watching too much isn't good for you." An advertiser telling people to consume less of its own product? That shouldn't happen. But they did it.
HYUNDAI | ASSURANCE | 2009
It was 2009, right after the Lehman shock. In a time when nobody was buying cars, Hyundai said something strange: "If you lose your job within a year, you can give this car back." It was a promise nobody in the industry had ever made.
WHIRLPOOL | Care Counts | 2017
In America, one in five children don't have access to clean clothes. That alone makes them miss school more often, putting them at seven times the risk of dropping out. What Whirlpool did was put washing machines in schools. That's it.
TRANSPORT ACCIDENT COMMISSION VICTORIA | MEET GRAHAM | 2017
Grotesque, strange, and impossible to look away from. Graham is the only human being ever designed purely to survive on the road. No neck, a thickened skull, twelve airbag-like nipples across his chest, lumpy skin. The moment you see him, you flinch. But buried inside that flinch is a message that really matters.
BURGER KING | STEVENAGE CHALLENGE | 2020
An English fourth-tier club averaging 3,000 fans a game, rated one star in FIFA 20. The moment Burger King became their sponsor, gamers around the world started transferring Messi and Ronaldo onto this team.
UNITED BREWERS ASSOCIATION | WHO SAYS BEER IS A MAN'S BEVERAGE? | 1962
In 1962, an American beer industry association asked a simple question: "Who says beer is a man's beverage?" Behind that single line, you can sense a real intention to change the times.
L'Oréal de Puerto Rico | 2024
There was hidden history woven into the way hair is braided.
Stella Artois | 2024
No face. No name. Just a tattooed hand. And yet, fans could tell instantly who it belonged to: David Beckham. Here's the clever twist Stella Artois pulled on celebrity advertising.
BEYONCE | FORMATION | 2016
On 2/6/2016, the night before the Super Bowl, a five-minute video dropped on the world without warning, opening with Beyoncé sitting on top of a New Orleans police car sinking in floodwater. With no corporate brand attached to it at all, this piece became the first-ever Cannes Grand Prix winner in the music category.
HUMANE SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL | SAVE RALPH | 2022
Ralph the rabbit can't see out of one eye. He's deaf in one ear. His back is scarred with chemical burns. And yet he talks proudly about his job as a "tester." This four-minute stop-motion film has been watched more than 150 million times around the world — and it moved Mexico to act.
MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER | Working with Cancer | 2023
We're living in an age where one in two people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. But what's truly frightening might not be the disease itself—it's being found out at work. The fear of losing your job gets tangled up with the fear of losing your life.
Stella Artois | 2024
A campaign by Stella Artois and GUT Miami called "The Most Famous 6-Pack Model," which won a Gold Lion at Cannes Lions 2024.
NISSIN FOOD | hungry? MOA | 1993
A Japanese commercial that won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1993. It's just a caveman chasing an extinct bird called a moa and never quite catching it—that's the whole story—but somehow it's funny, and somehow it sticks with you. The timing of the stop-motion creatures moving is just perfect.