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29 articles
HYUNDAI | TREE CORRESPONDENTS | 2025
Giving trees a voice sounds like a clever idea right off the bat. But what they actually did was the opposite: they simply made it possible for humans to hear what trees were already saying. Deforestation is one of the causes of global warming, yet it only gets 5% of climate coverage. So they made trees into "correspondents."
CORONA | SUN RESERVE | 2025
For its 100th anniversary, Corona did something unheard of: it turned the sun itself into a protected reserve. Usually when you hear "reserve," you think forests or oceans — nobody protects the sun. And the way they pulled it off was a total legal hack.
NATURA | The Amazon Greenventory | 2025
The assumption that the only way to profit from the Amazon is to cut down its trees? Drones and AI just proved that wrong.
Centre for Pastoralism | Desi Oon | 2025
An animation where wool itself starts talking—that alone is enough to grab you. This stop-motion film was shot in India over more than a year spent with shepherds, using real Deccani wool. It won a jury award at Annecy 2025, and it's also being talked about in Industry Craft at Cannes 2026.
PHILIPS | REFURB (Better Than New) | 2024
Stop selling new products, and sell only repaired ones instead. That's the decision Philips made, and it won a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions. This isn't a story about a clever ad idea — it's about changing the way a company actually sells things.
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.
B3 STOCK EXCHANGE & UNITED NATIONS GLOBAL COMPACT | EART4 | 2023
Earth became a company. And one on the verge of bankruptcy, no less. At first I had no idea what that even meant. But it turns out this was the perfect "translation" for business leaders.
RENAULT | PLUG-INN | 2023
Is it an ad, or is it a business? Renault's "PLUG-INN" came to smash that whole line apart. It took the Grand Prix in the Creative Strategy category at Cannes Lions 2023.
大塚製薬 | スカフィンのうた | 2023
A returnable bottle's journey, told in paper-cut animation and song. Kaho Nakamura's voice is gentle, Moji Tsuchiya's paper cuts, pieced together one second a day, are so lovable that by the end you kind of want to return a bottle yourself.
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.
パナソニック | Make New | 2022
When a girl touches a piece of fabric, a cold, lifeless blue world instantly transforms into one overflowing with green. This reversal was actually filmed by flipping the entire set and everyone in it completely upside down.
MARS | HOPE REEF | 2022
A cat food company planted letters on the ocean floor. H-O-P-E. Visible from space, on Google Earth. And made of living coral.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
DOCONOMY | DO BLACK | 2019
A credit card stops working. Not because you spent too much. Because you emitted too much CO2. A card like that actually exists.
CARLINGS | ADDRESS THE FUTURE | 2019
You buy clothes, wear them, take a photo, post it online. But what if those clothes never actually existed? In 2019, Norway's CARLINGS released the world's first fully digital clothing collection, and honestly, my first reaction was "wait, what?" But this campaign went on to win the first-ever Grand Prix in the Digital Craft category.
CARREFOUR | Black Supermarket | 2018
This isn't a supermarket ad. It's a lesson in how to pick a fight with the law.
THE BANK OF ÅLAND | ÅLAND INDEX / BALTIC SEA PROJECT | 2017
Every time you pay with your card, your CO2 emissions arrive right alongside your bill. A small Nordic bank built the world's first system to do exactly that. It won the Grand Prix in the Cyber category at Cannes Lions in 2017, and today it's used by more than 90 banks in over 40 countries.
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH | TREE CONCERT | 2013
Who would believe a tree could hold a concert? But it really happened in a park in Berlin. One night, a 100-year-old chestnut tree became a musician.
WWF | THE ANT RALLY | 2013
Bugs staging a protest. That ridiculous idea won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.
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.
MERCEDES BENZ | THE INVISIBLE DRIVE | 2012
This piece won the Grand Prix in the Outdoor category at Cannes Lions in 2012, and the first time I saw it, I just went "wait, what?" A car that's transparent — what does that even mean? But it really is see-through. Literally.
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.
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.
WWF | EARTH HOUR | 2009
Just turn off the lights for one hour. That's it—and with that simple act, hundreds of millions of people around the world made a statement about climate change. It's a simple but powerful campaign. Earth Hour started in Sydney in 2007, and by 2009 it had grown to an incredible scale.
WWF | EARTH HOUR | 2007
On March 31, 2007, 2.2 million people in Sydney switched off their lights all at once — a way of showing that they were serious about climate change, at a time when skepticism still hung in the air. This single hour of action has since spread around the world, 20 years on.