Emotion
315 articles
Heineken | Star Player | 2011
72% of Champions League fans watch at home, alone. Heineken and AKQA turned that loneliness into competition. Watching TV while predicting the next play on your phone — "Star Player" was the world's first live dual-screen football game.
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.
WALKERS CRISPS | SANDWICH | 2011
There really is a town in England called Sandwich. This is the story of how celebrities showed up there one after another and took over the town for three days.
UNIQLO | LUCKY LINE | 2011
In 2011, UNIQLO brought the "line" online. Turning that familiar sight of people queuing outside stores from 6 a.m. into a virtual experience on Twitter and Facebook was, at the time, an unheard-of move.
T-MOBILE | Welcome Home | 2011
In 2010, at the arrivals hall of Heathrow Airport, tired passengers walked out to find 300 people suddenly bursting into song. A choir that recreated even the sound of instruments using only their voices turned the cold, impersonal arrivals hall into a celebration in an instant.
HEINEKEN | THE ENTRANCE | 2011
The main character walks into a party — that's it, and somehow it holds your attention for three full minutes. In 2011, this felt like the moment beer ads leveled up.
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.
COCA COLA | THE FRIENDSHIP MACHINE | 2011
A 3.5-meter vending machine stands on a street corner. You want to put in a coin, but you can't reach the slot. You look up, and that's when it hits you: there's no way to buy from this thing alone.
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.
NIKE | CITY CUP | 2011
Mexico, 2011. NIKE turned an entire city into its playing field with a campaign called "CITY CUP."
AXE | BOWLING | 2011
In 2011, an ad arrived from Argentina for AXE. The title: "BOWLING." That simplicity is what drew me in.
KYUSHU RAILWAY COMPANY | THE 250KM WAVE（祝！九州） | 2011
On February 20, 2011 (2/20), from the window of a shinkansen running 250km from Kagoshima-Chuo Station to Hakata Station, a wild plan was carried out: film 15,000 people gathered along the route and turn it into a commercial. One shot, no retakes. If it rained, it was over. If no one showed up, it was over. But all that worry was blown away on the day all of Kyushu waved.
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.
OTRIVIN | Classroom Craft | 2011
If a stuffy nose makes you breathe through your mouth, your teacher might peg you as "a bit of a special case" and hand you the safety scissors instead. That's it, that's the whole idea—and somehow it becomes an ad for nasal spray.
ESTRELLA TOYS | COME BACK FERRORAMA | 2011
13 years after it was discontinued, the company's own president threw out a challenge in a video: bring the toy train's last 20km along the pilgrimage route to life using nothing but toy tracks, and we'll bring the product back. I love that kind of reckless dare.
au | LISMO Fes! | 2010
Around the 0:22 mark, there's a moment where Haruna Kawaguchi opens her mouth wide, and it's unbelievably cute. Her charm from back when she wasn't as famous as she is now is all packed into that single instant. Whoever on the crew captured that moment did an amazing job.
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.
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.
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.
ZOO ANTWERP | BABY ELEPHANT | 2010
An elephant's pregnancy, watched by an entire country. The ultrasound photos, the contractions, the moment of birth. This isn't really an ad—it's the story of everyone coming together to witness a new life.
POLO MINT SWEETS | SNOW STAMP | 2010
In 12/2009, the whole of the UK was blanketed in snow. Someone had an idea: "This blank white snow looks just like a POLO mint." So they made a giant stamp and pressed it into parks and benches everywhere.
HEINEKEN | AUDITORIUM | 2010
On October 21, 2009, 1,000 football fans gathered at an auditorium in Milan, with no idea they were walking straight into a trap.
BOSCH | Fresh Stone-Age Meat | 2010
Mammoth steak in the freezer aisle. Dinosaur leg cuts. Saber-tooth tiger fillet. Packaged up like they're totally real products, sitting right there on the shelf. The confused faces of shoppers walking by? Priceless.
IKEA | Interactive Catalogue | 2010
In 2010, just a few years after the iPhone came out, IKEA had already built an app that let you place furniture in your room through your camera. This was years before AR became a trend.
AIDES | GRAFFITI | 2010
The hero of this ad is a single graffiti penis scrawled on a bathroom wall. An ad with genitals as the main character isn't something you see every day.
PEPSICO | Sandwich | 2010
There's an actual town in Kent, England, named Sandwich. Walkers took over the whole thing. Turning a place name into a campaign feels almost too clever to be fair.
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.
ソフトバンク | SMAP大移動 | 2009
Sixty seconds, almost entirely one continuous shot. Actually, it's so good you can't even figure out why they bothered cutting away for the scene where the Father Dog goes outside. The tension comes through the screen and hits you directly, on top of being overwhelmingly entertaining.
ユニクロ | UNIQLO LUCKY SWITCH | 2009
In 2009, the method UNIQLO chose to promote its year-end sale was a bold piece of advertising that took over other people's blogs and turned them into a lottery venue without asking.
SOYJOY | 低GI | 2009
In a SOYJOY commercial from around 2009, a woman doing yoga has such a beautiful body that I just stopped and stared. Instead of "filling that little hungry gap," I think this direction is overwhelmingly better.
PlayStation | Play Face | 2009
Emotion shows on your face. That's basically what the word "expression" means, so it's obvious - but this campaign captured that obvious truth head-on. The faces of people playing a game. That's it. But that's everything.
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.
T MOBILE | Life's for Sharing - Dance | 2009
2009, London's Liverpool Street Station. In the middle of the rush hour crowd, one commuter started dancing. Then another, then another. Before anyone knew it, 350 people were dancing their hearts out to "Shout" in a full-blown celebration.
MARS | STRAUCHANIE SPONSORSHIP | 2009
In 2009, MARS launched a sponsorship deal in Australia with a player who didn't actually exist.
Nike | Take It To The Next Level | 2008
This film traces a soccer player's path from amateur beginnings all the way to the national team, all seen through his own eyes. Honestly, the idea of doing it in first-person view is something you might think of on your own. But the scale here is different, and so is the money behind it. The sheer luxury of lining up Cristiano Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Wayne Rooney, Cesc Fàbregas, Zlatan Ibrahimović, and even manager Arsène Wenger. Of course it was directed by Guy Ritchie. Just picturing it is fun.
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.
江崎グリコ | OTONA GLICO 〜25年後の磯野家〜 | 2008
In 2008, Sazae-san got a live-action adaptation nobody saw coming. And the premise was wild: it was set 25 years in the future. Tadanobu Asano as Katsuo, Rie Miyazawa as Wakame, Eita as Tara-chan, Shun Oguri as Ikura-chan. The casting alone was enough to make people go "wait, you can actually do that?"—a real testament to the strength of the idea.
CADBURY | GORILLA | 2008
A gorilla plays the drums. That's it. For 90 seconds, no product, no dialogue. Just drumming along to a Phil Collins song. And somehow, that was enough to make the whole world smile.
SONY | REC YOU | 2008
In 2008, SONY launched "REC YOU," a campaign built around a wild experience: send in a photo of your face, and it starts singing along to music. The submitted faces flooded banner ads, street-side screens, TV shows, and blog widgets everywhere. Digital technology and cross-media power combined as a trio to show off "the new world of Walkman."
SONY | PLAY-DOH | 2008
Rabbits filling up an entire city. And here's the thing: this isn't CGI. It's all stop-motion. It's completely insane.
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.
PETRONAS | TAN HONG MING IN LOVE | 2008
A seven-year-old boy who wasn't even supposed to be the subject of the shoot ended up winning Malaysia's first-ever Gold Lion at Cannes. No script, none at all.
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.
AXE | AXE 3 | 2007
In 2007, an ad out of Buenos Aires won the Grand Prix at Cannes. In the deodorant market, it pulled off something that shouldn't have been possible: 1+1=3.
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.