Emotion
329 articles
POLYCAM X UNESCO | BACKUP UKRAINE | 2022
In 2022, Russian bombing threatened to wipe out not just lives in Ukraine, but also the sculptures and churches that had watched over its cities for centuries. So creators from the ad industry came up with an idea: turn the smartphone everyone already owns into a tool for protecting cultural treasures.
エフエム群馬 | 思い出話キヌヨさん | 2022
The moment I saw the title "Reminiscing with Kinuyo," I felt something nostalgic and warm. How did a local radio station turn "reminiscing" into an ad? Winning the GRAND PRIX means something must have really clicked.
SCE | The Prevention Grid | 2022
The era where advertising companies make more than just ads has truly arrived. Deloitte Digital built an AI and AR-powered wildfire prevention system for a power company called SCE. It won Gold at Cannes Lions 2022—and this was Deloitte's first-ever Gold Lion, which makes it a real milestone for the industry.
一般社団法人ABJ | STOP! 海賊版「ありがとう、君の漫画愛。」 | 2022
I cried so hard it hurt. That was my first reaction, and it still is.
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.
POLITICAL SHAKTI + THE TIMES OF INDIA | The Nominate Me Selfie | 2022
There's a campaign that turned selfies into "nomination resumes" sent straight to political parties. Women wrote their achievements and experience right onto their own photos, then sent them all at once, with no way to look away, to the phones of male-dominated party leadership.
JR東海 | 会うって、特別だったんだ。 | 2022
In 1988, Eri Fukatsu waited on a station platform for her boyfriend. In 2022, she had become a businesswoman taking the bullet train to Osaka on a work trip. JR Central quietly captured these 33 years of change in just 60 seconds.
森ビル | DESIGNING TOKYO | 2022
In two minutes and five seconds, it travels back through 58 years. From Nishi-Shimbashi in 1956 to Toranomon Hills in 2014, six Mori Building projects are stitched together as if in a single continuous shot. Sayoko Yamaguchi, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Takashi Murakami all drift onto the screen looking just as they did at the time. At some point you stop caring whether it's CG or real footage.
BURGER KING | NONARTIFICAL MEXICO | 2022
No models, no hair and makeup, no beautiful locations. Just black-and-white photos of ordinary people on Mexican streets, biting into a burger. Those photos became billboards — and even made it into a museum.
マクドナルド | 家族といっしょに。「僕がここにいる理由」 | 2021
7/20/1971. The day Japan's first McDonald's opened in Ginza. In 2021, it turned 50. This commercial wraps up those 50 years into a single story. Miyako Miyazaki plays two roles: "a junior high school girl on a date at McDonald's 50 years ago" and "the same woman today, eating a Big Mac with her grandchild." A 62-year-old playing a junior high schooler. Just that alone is enough to make you tear up.
大塚製薬 | カロリーメイト 見えないもの篇 | 2021
2020 was a year when everyone fought an invisible virus. And CALORIEMATE still delivered its usual commercial to that year's students taking entrance exams. But things didn't go as usual. Remote classes, disinfectant, acrylic partitions, cancelled competitions. The moment Naotaro Moriyama's "Sakura" started playing, the tears wouldn't stop.
ポカリスエット | でも君が見えた | 2021
A clever debate over "Is it CG or not?" matters a hundred million times less than that first "whoa" the moment you watch 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.
TELENOR | NAMING THE INVISIBLE PAKISTANIS | 2020
In Pakistan, 60 million children had no birth certificate. Without one, they couldn't get medical care or go to school — children the country essentially didn't recognize as existing. What changed that was an app that took just 10 minutes to use. At the 2021 Cannes Lions, it won Grand Prix in two categories, a first for Pakistan.
SPINNEYS THE LEBANESE BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION | THE BREAD EXAM | 2020
The motion of kneading bread dough and the motion of a breast self-exam. They turned out to be nearly identical. That one observation was enough to break through a cultural taboo.
THE BIG ISSUE & LINKEDIN | Raising Profiles | 2020
A homeless magazine seller signs up for LinkedIn. As a response to the pandemic, you couldn't ask for a more logical idea.
COPI | ADDRESSPOLLUTION.ORG | 2020
When you buy a house, someone tells you if there's asbestos. But nobody tells you how dirty the air is. The moment I noticed that imbalance, I couldn't help but growl.
WARNER MUSIC GROUP | SAYLISTS | 2020
One in twelve children has a speech sound disorder (SSD). The key to therapy is repetition — but for kids, that's just plain boring. So what about music? Or rather, isn't music itself the ultimate form of repetition? Starting from that simple question, Warner Music and ad agency Rothco used an algorithm to analyze a 70-million-song Apple Music catalog and created "Saylists," playlists with genuine therapeutic value.
CARREFOUR | ACT FOR FOOD | 2020
A supermarket broke the law, and ended up changing the law. And for that, it won the Grand Prix at Cannes. This is what it looks like when an ad actually moves society.
APPLE | The Whole Working-From-Home Thing | 2020
In July 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic, a seven-minute short film arrived from America. It was called "The Whole Working-From-Home Thing." And yes, it was exactly that: kids bursting into meetings, dogs barking, video calls in pajamas, screen-share mistakes, and somehow still making the deadline. The video crossed 10 million views within two days of release. As a sequel to 2019's acclaimed "The Underdogs," it wrapped the chaos that literally everyone was living through in humor.
東京ガス | がんばれ私たち | 2020
In November 2020 (11/2020), right in the middle of the pandemic, Tokyo Gas aired this commercial. A 25-year-old woman chasing her dream of becoming an actress lives through days that don't go the way she wants, all set to a song sung by actress Shizuka Ishibashi herself. Her father shows up in his little truck, her grandmother cheers her on through a smartphone screen, and that's when I gave up fighting the tears.
BEATS BY DRE | You Love Me | 2020
"You love Black culture. But do you love us?" In November 2020, Beats asked that question in a two-minute film.
カロリーメイト | My Way | 2020
The song and the sound effects here are just amazing. Listening to them yanks you straight back to that time in your life. Which tells you something: those sounds don't really exist (much) in the adult world.
REGENT PARK SCHOOL OF MUSIC | PARKSCAPES | 2020
Instead of "receiving" donations, why not "earn" them? Kids learning music ended up standing on the same ground as the pros who make a living from it.
CHARITÉ BERLIN UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL | Printed by Parkinson's | 2020
A 3D printer is shaking. It's been injected with data from a patient's tremors.
NOTPLA | Making Packaging Disappear | 2020
"Notpla" is short for "not plastic." That alone tells you what they're trying to do. It's edible packaging made from seaweed. And the brand itself won the Grand Prix in the Design category at Cannes.
CITY OF CHICAGO | Boards of Change | 2020
In 2020, the plywood covering Chicago's streets was reborn as voting booths. The same boards used to cover broken windows became boxes that deliver votes. That shift alone makes this a powerful idea.
Nike | 動かしつづける。自分を。未来を。 / The Future Isn't Waiting. | 2020
In November (11) 2020, all of Japan held its breath for two minutes. The film believed that the urge to play sports could lightly blow away garbage like discrimination. I've watched it ten times. "A standard masterpiece" feels like the right phrase for it, but that makes me wonder: what's the difference between a standard masterpiece and one that isn't standard at all?
DIESEL | ENJOY BEFORE RETURNING | 2020
Buy clothes, wear them, return them, get your money back. This practice, known as "wardrobing," costs the fashion industry an estimated $15 billion a year. DIESEL didn't try to crack down on it. Instead, they openly encouraged it.
HEINEKEN | SHUTTER ADS | 2020
In 2020, the pandemic forced bars to pull down their shutters. The lights went out across the city. So why not put those shutters to work bringing the light back?
MASTERCARD | Roadside Market | 2020
On Romania's rural roads, you'll find farmers sitting with homemade vegetables and cheese laid out for sale. They're not on any map, and they can only take cash. A business that doesn't officially exist.
ABINBEV | Contract for Change | 2020
You'd think this was a beer commercial, but it turned out to be about a contract. And that contract was trying to change America's entire farming system. This is a story about an ad that didn't just talk about something — it became the mechanism itself.
NEW ZEALAND AIDS FOUNDATION | Sperm Positive | 2020
A sperm bank for HIV-positive men. What comes to mind when you hear that? On 11/27/2019, just before World AIDS Day, it actually existed in New Zealand.
AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR DEAF CHILDREN | Fingerspelling with Machine Learning | 2020
In the United States, 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 babies are born deaf. 9 out of 10 of them are born to hearing parents. In many cases, that child becomes the first deaf person their parents have ever known.
DIESEL | FRANCESCA | 2020
This film, released for Pride Month 2020, has you watching what looks like a transgender story—until the very end, when it pulls the rug out from under you. She takes off her DIESEL denim and puts on a nun's habit.
MERCADO LIVRE | FEED PARADE | 2020
In 2020, the world's biggest pride parade disappeared. The 2.5km road that 5 million people were supposed to walk was completely wiped out by the pandemic. Brazil's GUT rebuilt that road on Instagram, using 279 photos.
FONDATION DE FRANCE | BEE_INFLUENCER | 2020
I always thought influencers were a human thing. Turns out I was wrong. A bee smaller than an inch gathered 280,000 followers on Instagram and poured the ad money straight into saving her own species. This really happened.
GO EQUAL MOVEMENT | #GOEQUAL | 2020
In June 2019, the moment she scored in a Women's World Cup match, Brazilian soccer legend Marta Vieira da Silva dramatically pointed to her own cleat. It was a historic moment, breaking the record for most World Cup goals scored by any player, male or female. There was no corporate sponsor logo on that shoe—just a pink and blue equality symbol shining on it.
BURGER KING | THE MOLDY WHOPPER | 2020
A burger covered in mold became one of the most beautiful ads in the world. In 2020, Burger King released footage of a Whopper rotting over 35 days, with the tagline "The Beauty of No Artificial Preservatives." It broke a food-advertising taboo head-on.
LACOSTE | CROCODILE INSIDE | 2020
Two people are fighting. Their words get so fierce that the building actually splits in two. In the end, she leaps over the rubble to come back to him. Honestly, this feels like a movie.
Google | 100 Billion Words | 2019
The most translated words in the world are "How are you?", "Thank you", and "I love you." Google decided to show that with data.
GOOGLE | Creatability | 2019
Moving your face to make music. Drawing a picture by listening to sound. Turning your whole body into an instrument. This wasn't a tool made for people with disabilities—it was an experiment that asked, "What do we even mean by creativity?"
TOYOTA | START YOUR IMPOSSIBLE | 2019
The car disappeared from Toyota's global campaign. What's shown instead: wheelchairs, robotic prosthetic legs, support robots. A car maker made an ad that doesn't show a car.
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.
L’OREAL | THE NON-ISSUE | 2019
Both the beauty industry and fashion magazines have long acted as if women over 50 simply didn't exist. L'Oréal Paris and British Vogue set out to fill that gap.
NIKE | DREAM CRAZY | 2019
A man kneeling became the face of the world's biggest sports brand. An ad that gets people burning Nike products and rushing out to buy new ones at the very same time? That doesn't happen often.
APPLE | Apple at Work - The Underdogs | 2019
Three minutes. It's basically a short film. It's just about four unremarkable office workers trying to turn an idea into something real in two days, but you end up completely absorbed and forget you're even watching an Apple ad.
KRAFT | LEGAL-ADE | 2019
A kid opens a lemonade stand, and the police shut it down. In America, this isn't an urban legend. It actually happens.