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28 articles
SUNCORP INSURANCE | HAVEN | 2026
What would you do if your own house turned to you and said, "Actually, I'm not great with floods"? An insurance company came up with the idea of having the house itself speak.
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.
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.
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.
MARS | THE LION'S SHARE | 2019
Animals are some of advertising's biggest earners, yet they're never paid a cent. The industry decided to fix that contradiction itself. Winner of the Grand Prix in the SDGs category at Cannes Lions 2019.
SUNCORP | SMARTPLATES | 2017
What this insurance company built wasn't an ad — it was an app for getting your driver's license. And it actually got officially recognized as a valid record-keeping method in Australia.
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.
headspace | Reword | 2017
A red strikethrough appears before you hit send. Type something cruel, and it asks, "Are you sure you want to send that?" It's basically spellcheck for bullying. The mechanism is simple, and the aim is dead straight.
AUSTRALIAN ROAD SAFETY FOUNDATION | Life-Saving Stickers | 2016
Just stickers of children stuck on trash bins. But when 850,000 of them hit the streets every week, that's basically the biggest billboard in town.
TRANSPORT ACCIDENT COMMISSION | Ungiven Gifts | 2014
209 gifts, each painted white, stand in a square in Melbourne. Toys, handbags, a vase, a scarf. Each one even has a handwritten tag attached, but there's no one left to receive them.
Metro Trains Melbourne | Dumb Ways to Die | 2012
I believe this one swept multiple Grand Prix categories at Cannes, and I ended up watching it so many times I nearly died. It got me thinking there must be some kind of formula for a film that can withstand being watched over and over. Music is probably a huge part of it, and this campaign has an incredibly good song. Which makes me realize that ad planners can't just be experts in how a film scene is crafted—they also need to know music inside and out. It really is a total art form. Amazing stuff.
CARLTON DRAUGHT | Slow Mo | 2011
Set to Puccini's grand opera, the ad shows men's ridiculous moments at the pub unfolding in extreme slow motion. A peanut flies out of someone's mouth. A backside lands on a bar stool. It's all so beautiful that you can't stop laughing.
SCOPE | SEE THE PERSON | 2011
In the darkness, rock music rings out. Then the lights come up on the members of a six-person band, Rudely Interrupted. The music tells you first, before anything else, that five of them are living with disability.
WWF | MONKEY (Space Monkey) | 2010
In the 1960s, during the US space program, a monkey was sent into space. Then, 65 years later, he returns to Earth—only to find his home transformed beyond recognition.
CADBURY | IT'S NO PICNIC | 2010
Turn on the TV in Australia in 2010 and you might catch a 30-second ad of an ordinary person desperately stuffing a chocolate bar into their mouth. A different person, a different face, every time. Over 200 ads ran, and not one was the same as another.
CANON | EOS PHOTOCHAINS | 2010
In 2010, Canon Australia turned photography, a solo hobby, into a game that connects people. This campaign won the Grand Prix in the Media category at Cannes Lions.
WWF | EARTH HOUR | 2009
Just turn off the lights for one hour. That's it—and with that simple act, hundreds of millions of people around the world made a statement about climate change. It's a simple but powerful campaign. Earth Hour started in Sydney in 2007, and by 2009 it had grown to an incredible scale.
MARS | STRAUCHANIE SPONSORSHIP | 2009
In 2009, MARS launched a sponsorship deal in Australia with a player who didn't actually exist.
WWF | EARTH HOUR | 2007
On March 31, 2007, 2.2 million people in Sydney switched off their lights all at once — a way of showing that they were serious about climate change, at a time when skepticism still hung in the air. This single hour of action has since spread around the world, 20 years on.
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.
VICTORIA BITTER | BOONIE | 2006
Buy a VB and you'd get a miniature figure of a real former cricket player delivered to your home, one that would start talking along with the TV broadcast. And they made 200,000 of them.
VIRGIN | 5 CENT | 2005
Australia, 2005. Just hearing the name VIRGIN gives you a feeling something's about to happen. "5 CENT," made by HOST SYDNEY, won the Grand Prix. The strength of a price, conveyed through the title alone.
VIRGIN | Warren | 2004
In 2004, young Australians fell hard for an "incredibly unappealing, single and desperate" dork. His name was Warren. Speaking straight to camera in dating-video style, he was all confidence and zero charm—and yet somehow, totally unlovable as he was, Warren wormed his way into youth culture and became a legendary character who pushed Virgin Mobile to its highest-ever market ranking.
MAGNUM ICE CREAM | 7 DEADLY SINS: GIVE IN TO IT | 2002
Naming your ice cream after a sin, then boldly telling people to give in to it. This bold move by MAGNUM in 2002 was a massive hit in Australia, and it spread around the world.
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.
TRANSPORT ACCIDENT COMMISSION | BEACH ROAD | 1991
A road safety ad from Australia, made in 1991. I watched it for the first time in 2024, and it sent a chill down my spine. The footage is over 30 years old, but that scream hasn't aged a day. Human screams, it turns out, don't come with an expiration date.
NACAIDS | THE GRIM REAPER | 1988
In 1987, a bowling alley appeared on Australian television. The pins the Grim Reaper's ball knocked down were a mother holding a baby, and children at play. It was pulled off air after just three weeks — one of the most controversial ads in the history of public health.
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.