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231 articles
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.
NIKE+ | FuelBand | 2012
This isn't an ad. But an ad agency made it. That contradiction is exactly why it won two Grand Prix at Cannes.
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.
HELP REMEDIES | Help I Want to Save a Life | 2012
Open up a bandage, and inside is a bone marrow donor registration kit. The blood from your cut finger, just as it is, might be enough to save a life.
TROY PUBLIC LIBRARY | Book Burning Party | 2012
Signs went up around town announcing a "book burning party." Everyone was furious. But that anger was exactly the plan to save the library.
SNOOP DOGG | Rolling Words | 2012
You read a book, then light up the page and smoke it. Who else but Snoop Dogg could get away with an idea this wild?
HYATT HOTELS | THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD | 2012
A movie that criticizes product placement, made possible by product placement. This is that provocative, mischievous humor from Morgan Spurlock, who turns the contradiction itself into the whole point of the project.
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?
BAND-AID | MAGIC VISION | 2012
The instant a kid starts to cry from a scrape, Kermit pops up right on the Band-Aid and starts singing. Just hold up your phone, and an ordinary bandage turns into a tiny stage.
PUMA | AFTER HOURS ATHLETE | 2011
"A 5 AM taxi is way more fun than a 5 AM run" — with this one line, PUMA rewrote the definition of sport in 2011. Pool, darts, karaoke. No sweat required, no records needed. This ad declared that the stamina to party all night long is athletic spirit itself.
Google Chrome | The Web Is What You Make of It | 2011
On 5/21/2011, this commercial aired live during Saturday Night Live. Lady Gaga running across the Brooklyn Bridge, fans dancing and singing their hearts out, filling the whole screen. That raw energy grabbed me and wouldn't let go.
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.
COSMOPOLITAN OF LAS VEGAS | Hotel Digital Experience | 2011
In a Las Vegas hotel lobby stand eight LED columns running floor to ceiling. What plays on them isn't ads, it's art. This is the project that won the Grand Prix in the Design category at the 2011 Cannes Lions.
OFFF INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL | 2010 OPEN TITLES | 2011
Fragments of living creatures mix together, and new species are born. In a strange space that's neither underwater nor airborne, mechanical elements and organic textures intertwine as the names of 45 speakers rise into view. It's an unforgettable piece of film that marked the debut of The Mill NY's design department.
TOYOTA PRIUS | PRIUS GOES PLURAL | 2011
If there are more Priuses on the road, what do you call them? That question alone became an entire campaign. The answer wasn't found in the car—it was found in grammar.
VOLKSWAGEN | The Force | 2011
A kid dressed as Darth Vader racked up 15 million views on YouTube and became one of the most beloved ads in Super Bowl history.
HBO | Imagine | 2010
A mystery about a teddy bear plays out on a giant cube-shaped screen on a street corner, showing four different angles at once. One truth starts to look like entirely different stories, just depending on where you're standing.
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.
BOONEOAKLEY | BOONEOAKLEY WEBSITE | 2010
There's an agency that built its company website without a single page of its own. BooneOakley put together its entire site using nothing but YouTube videos.
WARNER BROS | WHY SO SERIOUS? | 2009
This is the story of a movie promotion that turned into a city-wide game lasting 15 months. From 2007 to 2008, fans around the world became "residents of Gotham City," solving puzzles, making phone calls, and picking up cakes.
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.
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.
OBAMA/BIDEN 2008 | OBAMA FOR AMERICA | 2009
At Cannes in 2009, the jury did something no political campaign had ever had done to it before. They gave it two Grand Prix at once, in Titanium and Integrated, and both decisions were unanimous.
BURGER KING | WHOPPER SACRIFICE | 2009
Delete ten friends on Facebook and you get a free Whopper. The person you deleted gets a notification saying 'You have chosen a Whopper over your friend.' It was a bomb CP+B dropped in 2009.
NYC & CO. AND WARNER BROTHERS | Oasis Dig Out Your Soul In The Streets | 2009
In September 2008 (month 9), on the New York subway, a street musician was playing a brand-new Oasis song that hadn't even been released yet.
DOMINO’S PIZZA | YOU GOT 30 MINUTES | 2009
Domino's Pizza used to have a guarantee: free pizza if it didn't arrive within 30 minutes. This campaign brought that idea back to life in a completely different form. Not as a guarantee. As a gift.
HAAGEN DAZS | HD loves HB (Honey, Let's Lick the Problem) | 2009
In 2009, honeybees were mysteriously vanishing across America. The reason Haagen-Dazs got involved was simple: without bees, it couldn't make four out of ten of its flavors.
HBO | Big Love Audio Mural Installations (Wall of Secrets) | 2009
Painted on a city wall, passersby had real headphone jacks embedded right in their heads. Plug in, and you'd hear that one person's own "secret" whispered in your ear.
MICROSOFT | Halo 3: Believe - John 117 Monument | 2008
It's an ad for a video game, but no game footage shows up anywhere in it. All you get is an old soldier recalling memories of war, and a massive 110-square-meter battlefield diorama. This ad treated Halo 3 like it was a real war.
ABSOLUT VODKA | ABSOLUT MACHINES | 2008
In 2008, robot orchestras showed up in Stockholm and New York. Someone, somewhere in the world, would send a short melody over the web, and the machines would "interpret" it on the spot, turning it into a three-minute song. It was a wonderfully romantic experiment cooked up by Absolut.
7-ELEVEN | KWIK-E-MART | 2008
A real convenience store disguised as a fake convenience store from a cartoon. And not just one store, but twelve. And done in a single night. The side that had been mocked by The Simpsons as a symbol of unhealthy eating put on that insult like a full costume and wore it proudly.
UNICEF | TAP PROJECT | 2007
Esquire magazine challenged the creatives it named to its "Best and Brightest" list to build a brand using just one page of the magazine. What David Droga came up with wasn't an ad at all — it was a mechanism that changed the world.
BURGER KING | XBOX KING GAMES | 2007
Burger King's agency made three Xbox games. They sold them for $3.99 as an add-on to value meals. They sold 3.2 million copies. The company's quarterly profit went up 40%. This is the story of an ad agency that made a product instead of an ad, and made the company money.
BUD LIGHT | Real Men of Genius - Mr. Hair Gel Over-Geller | 2007
In 2007, Bud Light went all-in on laughs with a radio spot. This is one entry from the legendary radio series "Real Men of Genius" — a gloriously dumb 60-second ad that goes all out praising a guy who uses way too much hair gel.
BUD LIGHT | Real Men of Genius - Mr. Hot Dog Eating Contest Contestant | 2007
In 2007, this radio spot from Bud Light's "Real Men of Genius" series paid tribute to competitive hot dog eaters. DDB Chicago turned the sheer resolve it takes to eat 24 hot dogs in 12 minutes into a song that's both ridiculous and full of affection.
BUD LIGHT | Real Men of Genius - Mr. Really Loud Cell Phone Guy | 2007
In 2007, an absurdly epic '80s-rock-style song started playing on radio stations across America. "Today, we salute you... Mr. Really Loud Cell Phone Guy!" What on earth is this?
SMIRNOFF | TEA PARTAY | 2007
For a new product launch with no budget and no TV airtime, BBH chose a parody rap video instead. Within days of going live, it reached a million people.
BUDLIGHT | REAL MEN OF GENIUS | 2006
"Bud Light presents... Real Men of Genius." A radio ad series that barely mentioned beer at all ended up running for more than 200 episodes over ten years. And Bud Light still sold.
BURGER KING | WHOPPERETTES | 2006
At the 2006 Super Bowl, BURGER KING had dancers dressed as lettuce, tomato, pickle, patty, and flame perform a Broadway-style musical number. Set to the "Have It Your Way" jingle, it's a spot where the burger's ingredients sing and dance for real.
ADIDAS | UNSTOPPABLE | 2005
A miniature army swarms him with helicopters and Hummers, but Tracy McGrady never stops dribbling. It's 60 seconds of the most ridiculous, most amazing footage you'll see.
NIKE | ANGRY CHICKEN | 2003
A young man, chased by an angry chicken, jumps, climbs, and scrambles his way across an entire city. The whole thing is shot like a nature documentary, narrated entirely in French. The setup is completely absurd, but every single move is real.
IKEA | Lamp (Unböring campaign) | 2003
In 2002, a lamp got thrown out onto the street. Sitting there in the rain, staring through a window at the shiny new lamp that replaced it, the whole scene was so pitiful, so painfully human, that it tugged at anyone watching. Then a man with a Swedish accent stepped into frame and said one line that would end up carved into advertising history.
REEBOK | Terry Tate, Office Linebacker | 2003
The moment it aired during the 2003 Super Bowl, all of America burst out laughing. A football linebacker patrols the office — the premise is completely insane, but the ad plays it dead straight, shot like a real documentary. It's one of those perfect pieces of work. The Reebok logo barely shows up. Not one pair of sneakers appears on screen. And yet it became one of the most memorable Super Bowl commercials of all time.
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.
FOX INTERNATIONAL | Regional Sports Campaign | 2001
A diver leaps off a cliff, but there's no water where the surface should be, and he slams into the ground. An athlete tries to catch a huge falling tree with his bare hands and gets crushed by it. Two drunk guys trading real punches. Blindfolded men fighting with clubs. Four completely insane ads, made to look exactly like real sports broadcasts, won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
SBC COMMUNICATIONS | NEIGHBOURHOOD, COPS | 2001
An ad from 2001 for a telecom company. This is one entry in a series Goodby Silverstein made for SBC Communications. Just from the title — "neighbourhood" and "cops" — I'm curious what kind of story this could possibly be.
BUDWEISER | WASSUP | 2000
60 seconds of friends shouting "WHASSUUUP!?" into the phone at each other. When this commercial aired during Monday Night Football in 1999, it somehow turned into a greeting used all over the world.
NIKE | BEAUTIFUL | 2000
This NIKE ad is from 2000. The title is "BEAUTIFUL." Somehow, that title alone already tells you something.