Industry
59 articles
Snack Jack Ring | Mother Strike | 2026
A mother steps straight into her son's video game. Just that premise alone makes you want to watch. This film from Thailand pulls it off well, layering the story of a family finding its way back into the same circle over the round shape of the snack itself.
OREO | OREO COWS | 2026
A black-and-white photo of a cow that looks like nothing but an Oreo. A hundred years of what the brand has been saying, wrapped up in a single image.
TOO GOOD | PAID SICK LEAVE FOR COWS | 2026
Sick leave for cows. I laughed when I first heard it. But by the time I stopped laughing, I realized this is a seriously important idea.
HEINZ | LOOK FAMILIAR? | 2026
Fry boxes around the world turn out to be shaped exactly like the Heinz logo. Nobody ever pointed this out, but once you see it, you can't unsee it.
WIKIFARMER | The Wedding Rice | 2026
At more than 50,000 weddings a year in Greece, rice gets thrown at the bride and groom. Did you know that rice used to be rice that was perfectly edible, but got thrown away instead?
WAITROSE & PARTNERS | Sweet Suspicion: A Deliciously Festive Whodunnit | 2025
The star dessert at Christmas dinner has vanished. Every member of the family is a suspect. With Succession's Matthew Macfadyen and Fleabag's Sian Clifford in the cast — an unlikely lineup for a supermarket ad — Waitrose pulled off a surprising two-part mystery.
カップヌードル | ラクサ食べてよ | 2024
That buzz cut really caught me off guard. This commercial turns MAISONdes' song "Show Me Your Phone" into a parody, with an illustrated girl getting so hooked on laksa that she turns into a Cup Noodle-shaped buzz-cut man. The gap between that cute art style and what happens is intense!
カロリーメイト | 光も影も | 2024
The tenth installment in the series, and the first time an art school exam candidate took the lead role. Boys had taken the lead four years running, from '19 to '22, so longtime fans who'd been thinking "maybe it's a girl's turn soon" couldn't help but grin.
カロリーメイト | 狭い広い世界で | 2024
Through the screen of a smartphone, someone had been watching a whole year in the life of a student preparing for exams. The 2019 song "Boku no Koto" gets a new orchestral arrangement, and all three members of Mrs. GREEN APPLE even make cameo appearances.
HEINZ | IT HAS TO BE HEINZ | 2024
Ask an AI to draw ketchup, and a Heinz bottle shows up on its own. Ask a person, same result. Behind the scenes at restaurants, fake ketchup gets refilled into Heinz bottles. The work that spent five years collecting proof of this blindingly obvious fact won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix at Cannes in 2024.
DP WORLD | THE MOVE TO -15 | 2024
Frozen shipping containers have been kept at -18°C for 100 years. Nobody ever questioned that number—until DP World asked "why?" By raising it just three degrees, they got an entire industry moving.
日清食品 | カップヌードル 担担 ザクザクコリコリ | 2023
Kinnikun comes bursting out of a swamp shouting "Tantaaan!" In his hands, a giant "Cup Noodle Tantan" — and as he charges forward he thrusts his hips while yelling "Zakuzaku! Korikori!" It's a spot-on parody of a legendary commercial from the 1990s, and people in their forties reacted to it all at once.
大塚製薬 | 入学から、この世界だった僕たちへ。 | 2023
A track athlete running in a mask, a canoe club member paddling at dusk, a kendo student swinging a sword at home. You can only see half their face, but their eyes alone carry all the intensity.
MAKRO | LIFE EXTENDING STICKERS | 2023
Those tiny stickers on fruit? They turned them into a medium. That alone cut Colombia's food waste by 70 tons a week. This might be the ultimate example of how small an ad can be and still work.
大塚製薬 | Midnight Train | 2022
A whole year of a student's life flows past the window of a night train. Carrying both the things they gave their all to and the things left unfinished, the train still keeps running toward morning.
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.
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.
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.
日清食品 | 匂わせたい | 2020
A man's shoulder caught in the edge of a glass. Matching shoes. A poem you read vertically that spells out "I'm with the winning team." Ugh, another hint-dropping girl on social media, you think, getting a little annoyed. But that annoyance turns into pure delight by the end.
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.
森永製菓 ダース | 祝25周年篇 | 2018
This is what 15 seconds can do. The only thing they really want to say is "DARS turns 25." If it also happens to get across that "December 12 is DARS Day," that's a lucky bonus. But they don't explain how tasty it is, or how many pieces are in a box, or anything like that. And I think that's exactly right.
カロリーメイト | 心の声 | 2018
I think it's fair to call this one a winter tradition by now. This is the fifth installment of CalorieMate's commercial series cheering on exam students. Another great one this year.
湖池屋 | スゴーンなダンス | 2017
Do you remember that ballroom dance commercial Masahiko Sato made back in 1988? With its catchy jingle, it was a legendary ad that swept through the era on rhythm and nonsense. Now, 29 years later in 2017, Koikeya launched an upgraded snack called "Sugo-n," and that very commercial came back to life in the 21st century, done up with EDM music and lightning-fast footwork dancing.
日清食品 | HUNGRY DAYS | 2017
This teaser is too cute. Eisaku Kubonouchi's illustrations are too cute. The narration is too cute too.
CHEETOS | CHEETOS MUSEUM | 2017
Finding oddly-shaped Cheetos inside the bag, then putting them on display in a museum. This ridiculous idea led to the best sales week in the brand's history.
KRAFT HEINZ | New and Not Improved | 2017
Kraft Heinz changed the recipe for its mac and cheese and kept selling it for three months without telling a single soul. 50 million boxes of it. Staying quiet about a change is about the one move you're never supposed to make in advertising, and that's exactly what they did.
江崎グリコ | Smile.Glico みんなとハグハグ篇 | 2016
A character called Hug Hug goes around hugging people all over the world. Watching the smiles spread from person to person, you can feel something inside you loosen up.
日清食品カップヌードル | OBAKA's大学に春が来た！ | 2016
"If you try something, people mock you. If you fail, people pile on." In an era like that, Beat Takeshi stood frozen as a bronze statue of the university president, while Sachiko Kobayashi, Mutsugoro, Mari Yaguchi, and Takashi Niigaki served as the professors at the newly opened "OBAKA's UNIVERSITY." People said there probably aren't many companies in Japan that could greenlight a commercial idea like this — and no wonder. The moment I saw it, I had to take my hat off.
カロリーメイト | Mate | 2016
There are friends, all born in 1991, who shave their heads, run, show each other their backs as they go, and laugh — and just that is already a complete piece of film. There's a series like that.
マルコメ | 世界初カワイイ味噌汁 原宿味（Definition of Japanese Kawaii） | 2016
Packaging miso soup as "kawaii" sounds like a strange combination, but somehow it works. In 2016, Marukome launched a new product aimed at young people: the "world's first" cute instant miso soup. The promotional film made for it was done with insane levels of commitment, and it ended up winning Gold at ADFEST 2017.
カップヌードル | OBAKA's UNIVERSITY | 2016
The first installment got pulled off air just one week after it sparked backlash online. But Nissin didn't stop there—two months later, they brought back Beat Takeshi and Sachiko Kobayashi for another round. Has any brand in Japanese advertising ever shown such a bold "fight back" attitude?
ミエライス | いただきます、ミエライス | 2016
A local commercial that feels truly local. Honestly, that alone tells you everything - I think this is exactly what I'd been wanting to see.
カロリーメイト | 夢の背中 | 2016
This CALORIEMATE commercial cheering on students taking entrance exams follows a year in the life of a son grinding through a second attempt at university entrance exams, from the mother's point of view—from the day he decides to repeat the year to the day of the exam itself. Niiro Murakami, who shaved off his long hair for the role, plays the son, while Misuzu Kanno plays the mother who watches over him with quiet warmth. The soundtrack features Ryota Fujimaki's own cover of Remioromen's song "March 9th."
湖池屋 | ジャガッツ 主婦と犯人 | 2016
You know that scene from crime dramas where they rewind the security camera footage to check the culprit's face? That's exactly what happens here. But what's caught on screen is a group of housewives talking about a product. Every time the tape rewinds, they repeat the same line: "Koikeya's Jagatz—these ridges are what make it so tasty." Just 15 seconds long, but it's an invention.
キユーピー | コンビニエント | 2015
This is an ad for a condiment, but it never says "delicious" or "good for you." The only word it says is "convenient." Mariko Takahashi just stands there on screen, and that's it.
江崎グリコ | オトナグリコ アーモンドピーク | 2015
This ad turns a pitch competition between ad agencies into the ad itself. Nanako Matsushima and Satoshi Tsumabuki play creative directors from rival agencies, fighting over Glico's business, in this behind-the-scenes story. You get a peek into the industry (surely exaggerated quite a bit), and that alone makes it fun to watch.
マルコメ | 料亭の味 カップみそ汁 夜食篇 | 2015
The third animated commercial in the "Ryotei no Aji" series came out in February 2015. A daughter on edge from exam prep, and a father who's lost the knack for talking to her. So late one night, he quietly puts together a midnight snack for her. That's the whole story. And somehow that's exactly what makes it so moving.
LIDL | BOSSE’S MILK | 2015
One grumpy guy's name ended up printed on milk cartons all over the country the very next month. Nobody expected a single post to get such a serious response.
江崎グリコ | smile.Glico | 2014
Satoshi Tsumabuki, dressed up as a clown, goes around turning grumpy people from all over the world into smiling ones, one after another. Because it's a long-form video, watching it leaves you with a feeling like you just finished a movie.
日清カップヌードル | SURVIVE! | 2013
In 2013, Nissin went and did something wild. A young office worker in a suit of armor charges into a Western army, shouting "Nice to meet you!" before getting blown away by a cannon. A job-hunting student gets grilled by a polar bear interviewer in a blizzard, and at the beach, a monstrous shark attacks people, demanding "likes!" It's completely absurd, yet it captures the mood of 2013 exactly as it was.
SEAWEED | DESIGN NORI | 2012
Using a laser cutter to etch patterns into sheets of nori that hadn't changed in 500 years. The idea of designing the product itself, not the package, was a total blind spot.
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.
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.
NESTLE | KIT KAT MAIL | 2009
Putting a chocolate bar straight into a mailbox. Who would have thought that could happen? But it did — and it became the day that idea won the Grand Prix at Cannes.
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.
MARS | STRAUCHANIE SPONSORSHIP | 2009
In 2009, MARS launched a sponsorship deal in Australia with a player who didn't actually exist.
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.
ネスカフェ | 朝のリレー | 2003
There's something striking about the simple fact that "somewhere on this planet, morning is always just beginning." It's obvious when you think about it, but it still catches you off guard - and that small realization, carried by the power of a poem, sweeps the viewer far, far away in an instant.