Industry
31 articles
Vi (Vodafone Idea) | Guardian Beads | 2026
Maha Kumbh Mela draws 500 million pilgrims, and every day 5,000 people go missing. When they bathe, phone numbers written on their palms simply wash away. Vi came up with a way to turn family phone numbers into something people wear instead — a string of prayer beads.
MOVISTAR | THIS IS NOT A GAME | 2024
The person on the other side of the screen might not be a friend. A video that looks like a kids' game walkthrough but keeps telling a horrifying story the whole time.
COX COMMUNICATIONS | Project Convey | 2022
AI turns the emotions on the other side of a video chat into a single emoji. Cox actually built this prototype for people with autism.
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.
KPN | EVERT_45 | 2018
What if a boy living in 1945 had filmed vlogs just like kids do today? KPN actually turned that idea into real posts on YouTube and Instagram.
BOOST MOBILE | Boost Your Voice | 2017
During the 2016 US presidential election, a Boost Mobile phone store became an actual polling place. It was the first time ever that a private company's store became an official polling location. The campaign was serious enough, in a not-even-a-little-funny way, that it won multiple Grand Prix at Cannes.
NTTドコモ | ForONEs 2017 | 2017
This commercial, released by Docomo in 2017 under the name "ForONEs," shows people taking off colorful T-shirts to portray the diversity within each individual. Take off the actor, and there's a dancer. Take off the professional boxer, and there's a single mother. Take off the doctor, and there's a patient. Everyone has multiple faces, but behind them all is just one "self." At a time when everyone and their mother was talking about diversity, this 60-second spot boldly stripped away any sense of "Docomo-ness," and that choice itself feels like a kind of resolve.
LINEモバイル | 愛と革新。 | 2017
45 seconds of Non staring silently at the camera. Kirinji's "Aliens" plays, and at the end only the words "Love and Innovation." appear. It never says the service is cheap. There's nothing else it needs to say, and that's exactly the point.
TIGO-UNE | THE PAYPHONE BANK | 2017
In Colombia, 8 million people don't have a bank account. Living on $3.5 a day, all they can do is hide their coins at home. In that country, TIGO-UNE turned payphones into banks, just as they were. The Grand Prix in Product Design wasn't given out for nothing.
UQ mobile | 紀香の誕生日 | 2017
The moment Norika showed up on screen, I went "huh?"—and then about two seconds later it hit me with a full "whoa!" I'd been watching the UQ Three Sisters series because I love Mikako Tabe, so having Fujiwara Norika suddenly turn up was a real shock. This feels like one of those ideas that must have felt amazing the second someone thought of it.
ソフトバンク | プロポーズ | 2016
How do you capture a marriage proposal, one of life's big climactic moments? The chemistry between two distinctive actors, Mikako Ichikawa and Ryo Kase, creates an atmosphere that sticks with you in an odd way.
NTT DOCOMO | 3-SECOND COOKING | 2015
A shrimp flies through the air, passes through flames, and becomes shrimp tempura in 3 seconds. For the dumplings, the ingredients collide in midair and come together in 2.244 seconds. No CG, all real footage. The only thing you can say watching this video is "what is DOCOMO even doing" — and it still walked away with three Golds at Cannes.
au | SYNC YELL | 2015
There was no time to wonder how much of this was set up and how much was real, because the tears were already coming early on.
VODAFONE | Between Us | 2015
Some ads are designed to never be found. This is the story of a secret app built to protect women in Turkey from domestic violence.
DU | TOO DEPRESSING (Cinema Tuesdays) | 2014
Watching a movie alone, in a theater, and it's a hopeless tragedy on top of that. Is there a crueler punishment? The first time I saw this ad from du, I laughed so hard I cried. I couldn't believe something this dark actually got approved.
SINGTEL | Old Phones Give New Life (Project Silverline) | 2013
All it took was loading five special apps onto old, unused iPhones. That alone reconnected more than 1,000 elderly people living alone with the world around them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ソフトバンク | ブラッド・ピット&キャメロン・ディアス シリーズ | 2006
I remember the first time I saw this on TV, I actually said "whoa" out loud. You could feel the sense that SoftBank had bought Vodafone and was coming out swinging at the market, and then boom, there's Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz. It's a commercial that's purely about looking cool, nothing else. And it taught me that sometimes just being cool is enough.
VIRGIN | 5 CENT | 2005
Australia, 2005. Just hearing the name VIRGIN gives you a feeling something's about to happen. "5 CENT," made by HOST SYDNEY, won the Grand Prix. The strength of a price, conveyed through the title alone.
VIRGIN | Warren | 2004
In 2004, young Australians fell hard for an "incredibly unappealing, single and desperate" dork. His name was Warren. Speaking straight to camera in dating-video style, he was all confidence and zero charm—and yet somehow, totally unlovable as he was, Warren wormed his way into youth culture and became a legendary character who pushed Virgin Mobile to its highest-ever market ranking.
SK TELECOM | BE THE REDS CAMPAIGN IN 2002 FIFA WORLD CUP | 2003
In 2002, the entire country of South Korea turned red. This ad gave birth to the phrase "Be the Reds," which was printed on T-shirts, worn by 7 million people in the streets, and sparked a historic wave of fan culture that drew in 20% of the population.
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.
KDDI | ポーター編 | 2001
This is from 2001, starring Etsushi Toyokawa and Ryo Kase. Even back in 2015 when I first wrote about this, I thought it "hasn't aged a bit," and watching it again now, it really still hasn't. The casting and everything else feels completely natural, with no sense of dating at all. I think that's one sign of a truly great piece of work.
FRANCE TELECOM | CUSTOMS | 1999
An ad made by France Telecom ahead of the 1998 World Cup. Set at a border customs checkpoint, it follows officers smuggling a soccer ball, with a "Goal!" ringing out over the phone. Football gets people talking.
NTTドコモ | ポケベル「はじめる」 | 1996
In 1996, a 15-year-old girl lying on an octopus slide in a park, humming a little tune, appeared on TVs across Japan. "I got a pager for my birthday," she said in a sweet, slightly lisping voice. Her name was Ryoko Hirosue, and this commercial turned her into an instant star.
NYNEX | If it's out there, it's in here / DUMBWAITERS | 1988
A phone book ad that actually gets a laugh — that's a big deal. NYNEX's Yellow Pages ads were a memorable presence in the northeastern US in the late '80s.
OVERSEAS TELEPHONE CALLS | YUGOSLAVIA | 1977
1977. An international phone service in Australia used the voices of immigrants from Yugoslavia, and won the Grand Prix at Cannes.