Emotion
72 articles
Volvo Trucks | The Epic Split feat. Van Damme (Live Test) | 2013
The moment Enya starts singing, my jaw dropped and I let out a tiny "whaaat" (I was in public, so I kept it quiet), and my mouth just stayed open until the end. This 75-second film, released in 11/2013, still hits just as hard today.
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.
UNITED COLORS OF BENETTON | UNHATE | 2012
Obama and Hu Jintao. Netanyahu and Abbas. The Pope and an imam, kissing. The moment these posters went up in cities, the world reacted. Within hours the Vatican was furious, calling it a "grave lack of respect," and the poster of the Pope was taken down. That reaction was probably part of the plan all along.
THE PERES CENTER FOR PEACE | Blood Relations | 2012
Enemies, sharing each other's blood.
THE GUARDIAN | Three Little Pigs | 2012
What happens if you drop the fairy tale of the Three Little Pigs into today's news environment? The Guardian turned its answer into a two-minute film. It gives me chills every time I watch it.
ALS FOUNDATION NETHERLANDS | I Have Already Died | 2012
"Not for me. Because I'm already dead." On screen, people speak plainly, directly to the camera. The weight of this campaign comes from one fact: by the time it aired, every single one of them was already gone.
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.
JRA | 20th Century Boy | 2011
No celebrities, just horses, just a riff — who knew it could look this cool.
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.
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.
BANG & OLUFSEN | Audio Annual Report | 2010
Turning an annual report into music. Have you ever thought of that? I hadn't. But Bang & Olufsen and Serviceplan did it.
BBC | Winter Olympics 2010 | 2010
I never expected an Olympics promo to pull from Inuit mythology for the Vancouver Games. But somehow, it fits perfectly.
THE TOPSY FOUNDATION | SELINAH | 2010
Just playing the footage in reverse, that's it. But when I heard they kept the camera rolling every single day for 90 days to make that work, I was speechless.
P&G | Flora | 2009
Chris Cunningham shoots a perfume ad. The man behind the nightmarish music videos for Aphex Twin and Björk takes on Gucci's new fragrance.
THE TIMES OF INDIA | A Day in the Life of Chennai | 2009
A life-size cardboard cutout is born in the morning and dead by night. In just 90 seconds, you see the true face of the city of Chennai — no wonder it won India's first Film Gold Lion at Cannes.
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.
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.
ADIDAS | BONDED BY BLOOD | 2007
Mixing players' own blood into poster ink. I don't know another case where madness and love blend together this beautifully. Grand Prix in the Promo category at Cannes 2007.
HONDA | IMPOSSIBLE DREAM | 2006
This two-minute ad aired in the UK on December 2, 2005 (12/2). Set to Andy Williams's "The Impossible Dream," a man in a racing suit moves from one historic Honda vehicle to the next. The sequence gets wonderfully wild—he jumps off a waterfall in a boat and comes floating back out of the mist in a hot air balloon. It all ends with Garrison Keillor's voice saying "I couldn't have put it better myself," wrapping up a perfect two minutes.
NSPCC | Ventriloquist | 2005
"What's 9 times 8?" The one who answers is a ventriloquist sitting behind a little girl. No one notices him at all. I still get chills watching this 70-second film NSPCC made back in 2005.
ADIDAS | Impossible is Nothing - The Long Run | 2004
In old footage from 1974, Muhammad Ali is running in Zaire. Beckham and Zidane run alongside him, catching up. Today's athletes are joining footage that should have been long dead.
NSPCC | CARTOON | 2002
A boy who looks like he stepped out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon gets hit by his father. Burned with a cigarette. Pushed down the stairs. A laugh track plays, and because he's a cartoon, he bounces right back. But in the final moment, the boy turns into a real child, and he doesn't move.
Apple | Think Different | 1997
In 1997, Jobs returned to an Apple that was on the brink of bankruptcy, and what he put out into the world wasn't a new product or a discount—it was just two words. "Here's to the crazy ones"—this 60-second tribute to crazy people became more than an ad; it became a declaration.
PERRIER | LE LION ET LA LIONNE | 1991
This film won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1991, and it's still the only French film ever to win the Film Grand Prix. 28 years later, it's remembered by one in two French people, and in 2019 it was voted the greatest ad of all time by the magazine Stratégies. That's how far a water ad can go.